COMMUNITY FORCES FOR 
IIGIOUS EDUCATION 

T-Ycr K Early Adolescence 



a WALTER FISKE 




BooL 



. r b 



GopyiigMl^?_ 



COFffilGHT DEPOSIT. 



COMMUNITY FORCES 

FOR 

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

EARLY ADOLESCENCE 



By 
G. WALTER FISKE 

Professor of Religious Education and Junior Dean Oberlin Graduate 
School of Theology 



A TEXTBOOK IN THE STANDARD COURSE IN TEACHER- 
TRAINING OUTLINED AND APPROVED BY THE SUNDAY 
SCHOOL COUNCIL OF EVANGELICAL DENOMINATIONS 



Third-Year Specialization Series 



PUBLISHED FOR THE 

TEACHER-TRAINING PUBLICATION ASSOCIATION 

BY THE 

Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South 
Nashville, Dallas, Richmond 






COPYRIGHT, 1922 

BY 
G. WALTER FISKE 



APR 2 4*23 

5C1A705082 



He / 



? CONTENTS 

J Page 

Editors* Introduction 5 

7 

Chapter I 
2 The Early Adolescent's World and His Adjustment to 

; It 11 

^ Chapter II 

The Home as an Agency of Religious Education in 
Early Youth 25 

Chapter III 
The Function of Play in Character Development. ... 3S 

Chapter IV 
The Function of Work in Character Development. ... 54 

Chapter V 

The Junior High School as an Agency of Moral and 
Spiritual Training 70 

Chapter VI 
Friendship as a Character Builder 85 

Chapter VII 
Moral and Religious Values in Scouting and Other Clubs. 98 

Chapter VIII 
Civic and Patriotic Motives as Character Builders. . . 116 

Chapter IX 
The Church Schoors Opportunity in the Early Teens 131 

Chapter X 
The Church's Responsibility for Its Boys and Girls. . . 146 

(3) 



SUNDAY SCHOOL COUNCIL STANDARD 
COURSE IN TEACHER TRAINING 

Third Year — Specialization 

Beginners and Primary Units 

Nos.l and 3 separate for each department. Periods 

1. Specialized Child Study (Beginners' and Pri- 

mary age) 10 

2. Stories and Story- Telling 10 

3. Beginners and Primary Methods 20 

Including Practice Teaching and Observation. — 

40 
Junior Units 

1. Specialized Child Study (Junior age). 10 

2. Christian Conduct for Juniors 10 

3. Junior Teaching Materials and Methods 10 

4. Organization and Administration of the Junior 

Department 10 

40 
Intermediate, Senior, and Young People^ s Units 
Separate for each department. 

1. Study of the Pupil 10 

2. Agencies of Religious Education 10 

3. Teaching Materials and Methods 10 

4. Organization and Administration of the Depart- 

ment 10 

40* 
General Course on Adolescence. Same subjects 
as above but covering the entire period 12-24 
in each unit. 
Adult Units 

1. Psychology of Adult Life 10 

2. The Religious Education of Adults 10 

3. Principles of Christian Service 10 

4. Organization and Administration of the Adult 

Department 10 

40 
Administrative Units 

1. Outline History of Religious Education 10 

2. The Educational Task of the Local Church 10 

3. The Curriculum of Religious Education 10 

4. Problems of Sunday School Management 10 

40 
Full information regarding any of these units will be fur- 
nished by denominational publishers on application. 

(4) 



EDITORS^ INTRODUCTION 



SPECIALIZATION COURSES IN TEACHER- 
TRAINING 

In religious education, as in other fields of construc- 
tive endeavor, specialized training is to-day a badge 
of fitness for service. Effective leadership presup- 
poses special training. For teachers and administra- 
tive, officers in the Church school a thorough prepa- 
ration and proper personal equipment have become 
indispensable by reason of the rapid development of 
of the Sunday school curriculum, which has resulted 
in the widespread introduction and use of graded 
courses, in the rapid extension of departmental 
organization, and in greatly improved methods of 
teaching. 

Present-day standards and courses in teacher- 
training give evidence of a determination on the 
part of the religious educational forces of North 
America to provide an adequate training literature — 
that is, properly graded and sufficiently thorough 
courses and textbooks to meet the growing need for 
specialized training in this field. Popular as well as 
professional interest in the matter is reflected in the 
constantly increasing number of training institutes, 
community and summer training schools, and col- 
lege chairs and departments of religious education. 
Hundreds of thousands of young people and adults 
distributed among all the Protestant Evangelical 

(5) 



6 Community Forces for Religious Education 

Churches and throughout every State and province 
are engaged in serious study, in many cases including 
supervised practice teaching, with a view to prepar- 
ing for service as leaders and teachers of religion or 
of increasing their efficiency in the work in which they 
are already engaged. 

Most of these students and student teachers are 
pursuing some portion of the Standard Course of 
Teacher-Training prepared in outline by the Sunday 
School Council of Evanglical Denominations for all 
the Protestant Churches in the United States and 
Canada. This course calls for a minimum of one 
hundred and twenty lesson periods including in fair 
educational proportion the following subjects: 

1. A survey of Bible material with special refer- 
ence to the teaching values of the Bible as meeting 
the needs of the pupil in successive periods of his 
development. 

2. A study of the pupil in the varied stages of his 
growing life. 

3. The work and methods of the teacher. 

4. The Sunday school and its organization and 
management. 

The course is intended to cover three years, with a 
minimum of forty lesson periods for each year. Fol- 
lowing two years of more general study provision 
for specialization is made in the third year, with 
separate studies for administrative officers, and for 
teachers of each of the following age groups : Begin- 
ners (under 6); Primary {6-S)\ Junior (9-11); 



Community Forces for Religious Education 7 

Intermediate (12-14); Senior (15-17); Young People 
(18-24), and Adults (over 24). A general course on 
adolescence covering more briefly the whole period 
(11-24) is also provided. Thus the Third-Year 
Specialization, of which this textbook is one unit, 
provides for nine separate courses of forty lesson 
periods each. 

Which of these nine courses is to be pursued by 
any student or group of students will be determined 
by the particular place each expects to fill as teacher, 
supervisor, or administrative officer in the Church 
school. Teachers of Junior pupils will study the four 
units devoted to the Junior Department. Teachers 
of Young People's classes will choose between the 
general course on adolescence or the course on 
later adolescence. Superintendents and general 
officers in the school will study the four Administra- 
tive units. Many will pursue several courses in suc- 
cessive years, thus adding to their specialized equip- 
ment each year. On another page of this volume 
will be found a complete outline of the Specialization 
Courses arranged by departments. 

A program of intensive training as complete as that 
outlined by the Sunday School Council necessarily 
involves the preparation and publication of an 
equally complete series of textbooks covering no less 
than thirty-six separate units. Comparatively few 
of the denominations represented in the Sunday 
School Council are able independently to undertake 
so large a program of textbook production. It was 



8 Community Forces for Religious Education 

natural, therefore, that the denominations which 
together had determined the general outlines of the 
Standard Course should likewise cooperate in the 
production of the required textbooks. Such coopera- 
tion, moreover, was necessary in order to command 
the best available talent for this important task and 
in order to insure the success of the total enterprise. 
Thus it came about that the denominations rep- 
resented in the Sunday School Council, with a few 
exceptions, united in the syndicate production of the 
entire series of specialization units for the third 
year. 

A little more than two years have been required for 
the selection of writers, for the careful advance 
coordination of their several tasks, and for the actual 
production of the first textbooks. A substantial 
number of these are now available. They will be 
followed in rapid succession by others until the entire 
series for each of the nine courses is completed. 

The preparation of these textbooks has proceeded 
under the supervision of an editorial committee 
representing all the cooperating denominations. The 
publishing arrangements have been made by a simi- 
lar committee of denominational publishers likewise 
representing all the cooperating Churches. Together 
the editors, educational secretaries, and publishers 
have organized themselves into a voluntary associa- 
tion for the carrying out of this particular task, under 
the name Teacher-Training Publishing Associatio7t, 
The actual publication of the separate textbook units 



Community Forces for Religious Education 9 

is done by the various denominational publishing 
houses in accordance with assignments made by the 
Publishers* Committee of the Association. The en- 
terprise, as a whole, represents one of the largest and 
most significant ventures which has thus far been 
undertaken in the field of interdenominational co- 
operation in religious education. The textbooks 
included in this series, while intended primarily 
for teacher-training classes in local Churches and 
Sunday schools, are admirably suited for use in 
interdenominational, and community classes and 
training schools. 

This particular volume, entitled Community Forces 
for Religious Education, is one of the specialization 
units for the Intermediate Department. It will be 
found valuable also for study by teachers and officers 
in the Senior and Young People's Departments. 
It presents in clear outline and in an at- 
tractive style a discussion of the agencies and 
environmental influences bearing upon the religious 
training of pupils during the period of early 
adolescence with which teachers and leaders of 
Young People should be thoroughly conversant. 
The remaining units for the Intermediate Depart- 
ment deal with (l) A Study of Early Adolescence, 
(2) Teaching Materials and Methods for Interme- 
diates, (3) Organization and Administration of the 
Intermediate Department. Together these four 
textbooks provide a remarkably comprehensive and 
valuable training course for teachers and officers 



10 Community Forces for Religious Education 

in the Intermediate Department of the Church 
School. 

For the Teacher-Training PubHshing Association, 

Henry H. Meyer, 
Chairman Editorial Committee. 
E. B. Chappell, 
Sunday School Editor, M. E. Church, South. 



Community Forces for Religious 
Education 



CHAPTER I 

THE EARLY ADOLESCENT^S WORLD AND 
HIS ADJUSTMENT TO IT 

1. Jesus's Way of Living — the Aim of Religious 
Education. — Religious education is the education of 
the human spirit for Ufe. It is the introduction of 
self-control Into human behavior in terms of Chris- 
tian ideals. It is more than spiritual education; it 
is the education of character. Nothing that in- 
fluences character, especially growing character, can 
safely be ignored by religious education. The reli- 
gion of Jesus is far more than a form of worship, so 
religious education must do more than teach ritual. 
Christanaty is not simply a form of belief, so religi- 
ous education must do more than teach a Church 
creed. 

Christianity is supremely a way of life — the Jesus 
way. Therefore religious education must teach that 
way of living. The primary work of religious educa- 
tion is to teach the Bible, especially the story of 

(11) 



12. Community Forces for Religious Education 

Jesus's life and teachings; but we should always 
regard this as a means to an end. ReHglous educa- 
tion's real goal is to educate people in the Christian 
way of living. The goal is not reached until they are 
actually living the Jesus way. Merely understand- 
ing it is not living it, so explaining the Jesus way is 
not our whole task. Theory is not life. If Christian- 
ity is a wonderful way of living, the goal of religious 
education is never reached until our pupils are 
really living that wonderful way of Jesus. Our task 
is to realize his ideals in our pupils' lives. We are 
accustomed to make the life and teachings of Jesus 
Christ central in religious education, because we 
find in his godlike personality the spiritual motive 
power for saving souls and transforming human 
character and conduct. 

As character of the Christian sort is our goal in 
religious education, we need to make clear at once 
what is meant by it. A person's character is his 
usual mqde of being and doing. The relentless law of 
habit tends to fix and set this mode of being and doing 
and makes it increasingly difficult to change. In 
the work of religious education we avail ourselves of 
every possible means to help developing characters 
to live the Jesus way and thus become Christlike. 
We enlist all possible spiritual forces, through wor- 
ship, prayer, communion, instruction, and every sort 
of religious influence. But Church school people 
often forget that meanwhile many other agencies 
are influencing, for good or evil, the characters we 



Community Forces for Religious Education 13 

are striving to make Christian. It is the purpose of 
this little textbook to examine the various social forces 
in American communities which share in this great 
task of the religious education of boys and girls of twelve 
to fourteen. Let us hope that by studying and eval- 
uating these community forces we shall learn how 
to turn competitors into allies and thus be able to 
enlist them more definitely in our plans for the 
Christian education of the boys and girls of our 
community. The Church would be foolish to deny 
that these other agencies are having quite a con- 
siderable influence in making our youth into Chris- 
tian citizens. Let us discover just what they are 
doing and how to cooperate with them, so that 
Christ's kingdom may come more speedily in the 
world of early teens. 

2. The World of Early Teens. — For most of us it 
is a far cry to remember back to childhood. We may 
fancy we recall the facts, but we have probably lost 
the feelings. It is hard for adults to understand 
young folks, for mentally and socially they are living 
in a different world. Early adolescent girls and boys, 
of twelve to fourteen or fifteen years of age, are 
foreigners to the matter-of-fact world of maturity. 
In a sense they live in a world of their own fancy. It 
is a beautiful world, full of illusion and unreality, 
perhaps, but furnished by imagination with alluring 
visions and dreams of the future. Sad indeed are 
the cases where imagination is crushed out in mere 
childhood by the hard realities of poverty and evil 



14 Community Forces for Religious Education 

surroundings, and where premature responsibilities 
cheat the child beyond recall. Not so the normal 
life. Usually there is a wonderful zest for living, an 
overflowing vitality and abounding health, a hunger 
for friendship that finds satisfaction in a rapidly 
widening social circle as our eager boy or girl ex- 
periments delightfully in living. With sympathetic 
imagination let. us strive to find the secret of their 
happiness and boundless hopes and learn the various 
social contacts of their expanding world. Only thus 
shall we adequately measure the community forces 
that are molding their characters. 

3. Across the Bridge from Childhood. — It will 
help us to understand the world of early teens if we 
remember that this critical peroid of life is really the 
bridge period between childhood and manhood. 
Crossing this bridge, the boys and girls leave much of 
their childishness behind, and at the end of it they 
become, physically at least, men and women. While 
the complex physical changes are developing the 
sex functions, culminating at about the end of this 
period, there is a fascinating mental and social 
process going on in the boy as he develops his man- 
liness. While crossing this bridge from childhood 
he gradually outgrows some of those traits of the 
child which would be inappropriate and unfortunate 
in the coming man. Heretofore he has been, in 
true childish fashion, very instinctive, impulsive, 
self -centered, individualistic, irresponsible, and too 
suggestible — that is, too easily led. A large part of 



Community Forces for Religious Education 15 

our problem of developing manhood or womanhood 
out of the child is to help in the conquest of these 
childish characteristics. There is nothing in the 
world the boy longs for more than just to become a 
man. Manliness is. his chief admiration and highest 
hope during these critical years, and he will welcome 
our help in attaining it. His greatest danger is 
wrong ideals of manliness. 

We must help him overcome his childish slavery 
to instinct and teach him, as his reason and judgment 
develop, to live a rational, intelligent life. We must 
aid him in the battle for self-control, to overcome his 
childish impulsiveness. We must get him away from 
a self-centered life, which is responsible for most of 
his selfishness, and teach him the joys of altruism, 
which will broaden and deepen his character. 
Naturally individualistic, he needs to learn team- 
work. With practice in team play this will rapidly 
develop and fit him for cooperation in our social age. 
If he is hopelessly carefree and irresponsible in his 
happy-go-lucky boyhood, we can gradually, tactfully, 
by our appeals to his latent manhood, fit burdens to 
his broadening shoulders and make him more de- 
pendable. Meanwhile, as he grows in self-respect and 
confidence in his own unfolding powers, he will have 
more initiative, will be less easily led by the sug- 
gestions of others that so frequently get him into 
trouble, and, as he takes more firmly the helm of his 
own life, will develop some measure of leadership 
himself, Sometimes it is a perilous journey over this 



16 Community Forces for Religious Education 



bridge from childhood; but if, in the transit, these' 
childish traits we have mentioned are replaced by! 
the proofs of coming manhood or gracious woman- I 
liness, there is joy in the hearts of all who love our 
youth in early teens. 

These years are well known to be critical years for 
the laying of foundations in physical health and 
efficient mental activity for the years to come. While 
the sex functions are developing, great vitality and 
energy alternate with languor and listlessness. 
Though surprisingly few boys and girls die during 
these years, the foundation is laid now for permanent 
health or physical weakness. All the senses are 
peculiarly keen. Love for the beautiful is strong. 
It is time for aesthetic training, the develop- 
ment of taste, and the sense of appreciation of life's 
finer values. With the growth of ideals and a clearer 
personal conscience, personal standards of right and 
wrong are becoming fixed. Under right conditions 
we find deep foundations are now being laid in loyal 
friendships, in religious experience, and in personal 
ambitions for vocational usefulness. With all the 
sudden outburst of new powers in adolescence there 
is wonderful expansion in every phase of the boy's 
life; occuring similarly in the girl's Hfe a year or more 
earlier. Yet, with all this growth in maturity, we 
find in these years much indecision, fickleness, 
dreaming, longing; often painful self-consciousness, 
shyness, loneliness, a great need of sympathy, and a 
willingness to share it. In boy life thia is the chivalry 



Community Forces for Religious Education 1 7 



period, with a high loyalty to friendship and a real 
hero worship for the object of boyish admiration. 

4. The New World of Persons — It hardly needs 
to be said that our boy and girl are usually too hap- 
pily busy to be morbidly self-conscious. They know 
very little about the foregoing analysis of the prob- 
lems of their personal life. They are seldom inter- 
ested in introspection, for they are getting gloriously 
interested in the great game of life. A few years 
later, in middle adolescence, they will focus their 
attention more upon self and their personal future; 
the inner world of a new selfhood, with its stress on 
individuality, will be all absorbing; but now it is 
the outer world that is most absorbing — the world of 
new-found friendship, of engrossing activities for 
both mind and body, and constant variety in the 
great experiment of living. This outer world is of 
course chiefly a world of persons, groups, and human 
institutions, though the world of nature, with its 
many forms of beauty, still makes a strong appeal 
to his wide-awake senses. Due to his freshly awak- 
ened social instinct — or social consciousness, if you 
prefer — usually born in early teens, there is a newness 
for him in this world of persons. He has suddenly 
discovered his relaton to this world of folks. In a 
sense they belong to him, and he belongs to their 
world. This furnishes a new arena for the self- 
expression he craves, without which he can neither de- 
velop nor be happy. This new world of persons he 
discovers in the familiar groupings — his home, his 
2 



18 Community Forces for Religious Education 

neighborhood, his junior high school or grammar 
grade, his farm or workship, his club or gang, his 
fun center or playground, his Church and Church 
school. 

The influence of each of these community forces 
upon our boy and girl in early adolescence will be 
studied suggestively in the following chapters. It 
goes without saying that our world of early teens is 
rich or poor according to the efficiency of these social 
agencies in contributing to the growth of character 
and the breadth of life interests. It is because of 
this fact that we regard this study as profoundly 
important for religious education. 

This influence of these various community forces 
varies greatly in different neighborhoods. Homes, 
schools, churches, fluctuate strangely. Possibly 
one- third of these near-children have already left 
school, and perhaps one in twenty is homeless. Very 
few are within the reach of Christian associations 
for boys or girls, and easily half are untouched by 
the Church. Organized play or any sort of adequate 
recreation or wholesome amusement free from the 
commercial taint is unknown to most of them, es- 
pecially those living in the open country. With all 
our boasted resources our proud country is treating 
none too well these eager, fun-hungry, dead-in-earnest 
boys and girls whose vast social energies need normal 
expression and release for character's sake. 

5. How These Community Forces Affect Char- 
acter. — It is too late in Christian history for anyone 



Community Forces for Religious Education 19 

to claim that our character problem is wholly spirit- 
,ual, and that evangelism is the whole duty of the 
Church. Let us never forget the high importance of 
conversion and the youth's supreme need of loyalty 
to Christ his Saviour; but let us not be blind to the 
fact that all social agencies have character-making 
power, and that all personal contacts tend to influence 
the moral choices of our impressionable girls and 
boys. The fact is self-evident. The significant 
question for us here is, just how do these agencies 
affect the growing character? 

Four kinds of reactions in the mind aid in the 
formation of a growing character: (1) automatic and 
reflexive reactions; (2) instinctive reactions; (3) 
voluntary actions, and (4) acquired habits. The first 
are merely mechanical action, started by some stim- 
ulus either within or without the mind. The second 
are caused by instincts, and are complex activities, 
whose purpose and end are not understood by the 
actor. Ideas and a conscious purpose cause the 
third. The fourth form a very large part of our active 
life. Habits may begin either with instincitve or 
voluntary action but soon become as automatic as 
the first class mentioned above. As ideas have 
nothing to do with reflexes or instincts, only the last 
two kinds of reactions are subject to education, 
though the instinctive reactions may be repressed or 
redirected. Therefore, the main task of character 
building is to stimulate the ideas that cause voluntary 



20 Community Forces for Religious Education 

actions and to control the formation of personal 
habits. 

This looks simple, but it is more difficult than it 
seems. Complex motives enter into our voluntary 
actions', and our attitudes of mind determine largely 
our conduct. Knowledge alone does not produce 
character. Most of us know better than we do. 
Motive power to do right is fully as necessary as 
facts about righteousness. Wholesome desires must 
be stimulated. Truth must be given power. The 
right attidude toward duty must grow into fixed 
conviction. Admiration must become personal loyal- 
ty. Thus, ideas of right must warm up with the 
motive power of noble ideals; and ideals, wielding 
the lash of conscience, must rule the character. 

How, then, do the home and Church and school 
and other social institutions take a hand in this 
process of character formation? A series of questions 
may suggest the answer. Is the home giving the boy 
in early teens true ideas of what is right? Is it 
broadening his interests in life? Does it arouse his 
right desires and ambitions? Does it suggest to 
him right ideals and standards of conduct? Does he 
find in his home admirable types of character, which 
win his loving admiration and deepening loyalty? 
Does the home life fix the boy's mental attitudes to- 
ward life's emergencies so that settled convictions 
result? Meanwhile is the home developing the boy's 
conscience into a safe and'powerful guide, so that his 
highest ideals really dominate his growing character? 



Community Forces for Religious Education 21 

These searching inquiries suggest what a powerful 
influence for good or evil the home may be in the 
life of every growing youth. Similar questions may 
be asked of every other community force that brings 
its social influence to bear upon the lives of young 
folks. All share with the Church, as opportunity 
arises, the great responsibility for developing char- 
acter. Religious educators, therefore, should study 
to make all such social agencies more efficient, each 
according to its special function. 

6. City and County Diflferences. — In the great 
human fundamentals our American youth are much 
the same in city and country. The difference in 
environment, however, does affect a boy's opportu- 
nity, inheritance, and development; so we do find 
somewhat different types in rural and urban life. 
The native interests centering in the farm and in the 
factory are radically different and leave their im- 
press on mind and character. These vocational 
differences are further emphasized by the social 
barrenness of many rural neighborhoods. Country 
life of the richer sort has great advantages over the 
city, especially when near enough to be classed as 
suburban; but in the average rural community the 
boy and girl still suffer the handicaps of poor schools, 
meagerly equipped churches with untrained leader- 
ship, very limited social advantages, and little chance 
for wholesome recreation and team-play games. 
To be sure in the poorer sections of the cities there 



22 Community Forces for Religious Education 

are similar disadvantages, but few native Americans 
are obliged to live there. 

As a result of the social handicaps in country life, 
some measure of awkwardness, bashfulness, and 
social stiffness is often noticeable in our country 
boys and girls, making them sometimes painfully 
self-conscious. For their normal personal develop- 
ment, they need a better chance for self-expression 
in many helpful ways. A better social equipment, 
such as a modern rural village enjoys, would furnish 
the means for such self-expression and give our 
splendid country young people the opportunity they 
deserve. It is widely recognized that country boys 
and girls in good homes are often deeper thinkers than 
their rnore superficial city cousins, and their char- 
acters are fully as steadfast and dependable. We 
note these social contrasts here merely to call atten- 
tion to the fact that the task of religious education, 
because of the differences in social equipment and 
vocational interests, is somewhat different in city 
and country. 

7. Adjustment Brings Success. — In every sort of 
life success and efficiency depend on adjustment to 
the environment. Misfits cause failure and unhap- 
piness. Contentment is hardly possible to the 
square peg in the round hole. We must discover the 
secret of fitting into our surroundings and cooperat- 
ing with its personal and social factors. In this 
study we are making together of those community 
forces which ought to help in the religious education 



Commu7tity Forces for Religious Education 23 

of our boys and girls we shall find this general rule 
holds true. Our ultimate problem will be to get the 
young folks to cooperate with these various agencies 
as well as to get these institutions to meet the needs 
of the boys and girls. Where the school is failing is 
in its refusal to function in a way to meet the practical 
needs. of youth and to fit them for the sort of life 
they must actually live. It therefore misses their 
loyal cooperation. The same is true of the unsuc- 
cessful home and Church. Where institutions fail 
widely to win the hearty response of the neighbor- 
hood young people, experience shows that the in- 
stitution, rather than the boy and girl, has guessed 
wrong; for the normal youth is wholesome in desires 
and tastes and instinctively responds to right appeals 
to his native needs. Adapt these social agencies in 
our American communities to those needs of youth 
which each can most naturally serve, and you can 
make them all factors of great power in the character 
development of our future citizenship. 

For Investigation and Discussion 

What does religious education mean to you? 
What, after all, is its final aim? Does Christianity 
mean more to you than a system of belief or a form 
of worship? 

How would you define a person's character? What 
effect does religion of the right sort have upon 
character? In your early teens, what other agencies 
besides the Church had some influence upon your 
character? 

Try to remember and describe the world of early 



24 Community Forces for Religious Education 

teens. How differently did life seem then and now? 
In what respects is this the bridge period between 
childhood and manhood? What six childish traits 
should we help our boys and girls to outgrow? What 
are the real evidences of coming manliness? Test 
these points out with five boys in your class and 
decide what they need most just now. Then make 
a list of those social factors in the community which 
are affecting the characters of these boys or girls. 

In the forming of character what is needed besides 
knowledge of what is right? What mental reactions 
are subject to education? What did your home do 
for your character in early teens? What did it fail 
to do? 

Would you rather spend early youth in city or 
country? Why? What are some of the differences 
you have noticed between rural and urban boys and 
girls? Explain them if you can. How do you think 
the religious education problem is effected by rural 
and urban differences? On this point consult 
Chapters II and III in The Challenge of the Country. 
Fiske. 

In The Way to Life, King, study and report on 
Chapters II-V, on ^'The Basic Qualities of Life, 
Character, Happiness, and Influence." 

In A Social Theory of Religious Education, Coe, 
study Chapter XIV, on ''The Learning Process 
Considered as the Achieving of Character." Take 
notes on this for class discussion on the question of 
how character is formed. 

Examine The High School Age, King, carefully, 
especially Chapters II and V, on physical and mental 
changes in the teens. 



CHAPTER II 

THE HOME AS AN AGENCY OF RELIGIOUS 
EDUCATION IN EARLY YOUTH 

1. Homes, New and Old. — The American home 
in pioneer days was a little world in itself. Both 
physically and socially it was quite self-sustaining 
and independent. It had wonderful courage. Else- 
where in the world homes were huddled together in 
towns and villages, from which the people went 
forth to till the distant fields. Not so in America. 
Whether on a New England hillside or along Southern 
rivers or Western prairies or lost in the mountains 
or deep forests, no place has proved too remote or 
lonely for the brave American pioneer to found his 
home. These resourceful pioneers were blessed with 
many children, and the home did everything for 
them. To the interesting variety of farm life, an 
education in itself, was added different home 
industries, such as spinning, weaving, blacksmithing, 
carpentering, shoemaking, and countless other me- 
chanical trades by which the home produced every- 
thing it needed to sustain life. Not only was the 
early home the workshop but also playground, school, 
Church, and social club in primitive forms, as this 
fundamental institution did its best for the all- 
round training of its children. 

(25) 



26 Community Forces for Religious Education 

The point to notice is that all our other social 
agencies are outgrowths of and supplementary to 
the great primary agency, the home; for it is evident 
that the work of all of them is an extension of the 
work of the pioneer home. With developing civili- 
zation, this extension, of course, was inevitable. In a 
specialized age it became necessary to form other 
institutions to do more expertly what the home 
could no longer master. *^The father was God's 
first priest;'' but Churches were founded for social 
worship and service and teaching under trained 
leaders. Busy mothers have been great teachers; 
but schools had to be founded both to save the 
mothers and to furnish more efficient education. 
The growing wealth and complexity of civilization 
have diversified industry and subdivided labor until 
many a modern home has become merely a dormitory 
and a restaurant, with the family seldom together. 
Because of small families to-day the children find 
nearly all their social life outside their homes and go 
far afield for their fun. The modern home cannot do 
it all. Our specialized community forces are neces- 
sary for efficiency's sake. But the trend has gone 
too far. American girls and boys are suffering from 
overmuch institutionalizing. Just as they are 
barbered, tailored, shod, and doctored by outside 
experts (wants that the home attended to in the 
homespun days) so also they are schooled and 
churched, exercised, amused, and manually trained 
by outside agencies, while many a home shirks its 



Community Forces for Religious Education 27 

opportunity even to cooperate. Let us in this 
chapter try to discover what functions the home can 
best perform — which it ought never to surrender — in 
the character training of early youth. 

2. What Makes the Modern Home Task Hard. — 
We can hardly understand and help our boys and girls 
in the Church school unless we know the kind of 
homes they come from. The home background 
makes a vast difference, for here are formed the early 
habits that lay the foundations of character. As 
our last paragraph suggests, our industrial age has 
radically changed the average home. Farm life has 
been wonderfully improved by agricultural ma- 
chinery, the telephone, and the automobile; but the 
modern city, with its congested tenements and 
crowded apartments, has denatured home life, and 
the suburban home, with its thousands of commuters, 
is often heavily handicapped. 

Even parents who have refused to abdicate their 
responsibility for the training of their children find 
the task no easy one. To be sure, the task grows 
simpler when rare skill and painstaking faithfulness 
have won the child's loyalty and are rewarded by the 
youth's devotion to his good home and its ideals. 
But as all grow older together, the youth cannot 
forget that his parents are of an older generation. 
This makes the task more difficult, especially if the 
parents lose the feelings of youth and their zest for 
life, thus putting themselves out of accord with 
eager children with boundless hope and abounding 



28 Community Forces for Religious Education 

spirits. If the parents have forgotten what it feels 
like to be young folks, the boys and girls are the first 
to sense it. They lose confidence in their parents 
and their grown-up ideas about youth. The parents, 
too, fail to understand the children, because their 
dormant imagination and poor memory fail to 
interpret the unexpected things the young folks do, 
and the mystery of it widens the breach between 
young and old. 

The growing spirit of independence seldom gets 
troublesome before middle adolescence, but some- 
times in early youth, too much home restraint 
causes a rebellion. Many a restless boy runs away 
from home at thirteen or fourteen because of wander- 
lust — the inner urge for freedom and resentment 
against too close parental supervision. Working, 
boys and girls are most apt to feel this precocious 
independence, but on all social levels the anxieties of 
parents are seldom imaginary. It takes fine tact 
and intelligent sympathy to keep home influence 
strong even over the youth in early teens. 

3. What the Home Must Do to Win. — In savage 
life there is no problem of early youth! By that time 
children become men and women and soon are 
married. Adolescence is an invention of civilization ; 
or, rather, it is what made possible civilization, this 
prolonging of parental care through the period of 
youth. Parents who lazily shirk their watch and 
care over boys and girls in early youth are revert- 
ing to the low standards of barbarism. Dr. Park 



Community Forces for Religious Education 29 

says very keenly: ''The selfishness of parents is the 
greatest problem in the moral education of children. 
They do not Hke their children well enough to be 
friends with them/' 

It is obvious that the home must pay the price of 
success or it will fail to win. Parents must face the 
responsibilities of parenthood and know there is no 
real substitute for a father or a mother. It is easy 
to talk about willingness to sacrifice. Perhaps the 
real truth lies in the fact that parents must find their 
joy in such sacrifice. Successful and beloved parents 
would find it the keenest self-denial not to sacrifice 
for their children's sake. The life of a true home is 
founded in mutual respect as well as love. This 
means that the parents, instead of playing the 
tyrant, must respect the personality of the boy and 
the girl. Far better than trying to break a high- 
strung youngster's will is teaching the boy self-respect 
by reverencing his personality yourself. 

It is high strategy to honor the boy's coming 
manliness by treating him as if he were a year older 
than he is. You will speedily get what you expect 
of him — manly conduct. Consult his opinion, appeal 
to his judgment, start him thinking on life problems, 
take him into the family councils whenever you can, 
and you encourage his growing manliness while you 
win his real gratitude. It will make comradeship 
possible between the boy and his father, and this 
will prove a blessing to both. The boy is approach- 
ing life changes that his father can best understand. 



30 Community Forces for Religious Education 

Now is the time for frank talks that will bind that 
boy forever to his father in a mutual understanding 
that is like a secret bond between them. And even 
more true should this be of mother and daughter in 
these critical years. 

The wise father is eagerly looking forward to the 
time, a few years later, when this boy, man-grown, 
will be his junior partner, perhaps his chauffeur, 
his bookkeeper on Saturdays and vacations, his 
comrade on fishing trips. If he would be chums with 
him later he must begin this comradeship now with 
the boy in early youth. Let him interest himself in 
all the boy's fads and freak fancies, whether they be 
stamps or bugs, ' 'chemcraft" or * 'mechano,'^ the woods 
or the water, or the weird wireless. . It will take time, 
but the boy is a more important investment than any 
business, and the father needs such relaxation any- 
way. It's the surest way to keep him young. Doubt- 
less the mothers oftener solve this problem success- 
fully with their daughters. Happy the home — and 
such homes are legion — where the eyes of mother 
and daughter meet with perfect understanding. 
Whatever happens, such a girl is safe. She is not 
one of the restless many who take to the park or the 
promenade to escape from an uncongenial home. 
There's a mighty safeguard in making home interest- 
ing, in furnishing the boy and the girl places of 
their own in it, where they may keep their treasures 
and arrange their nests for their own comfort and 
delight, with a solid sense of ownership, of personal 



Community Forces for Religious Education 31 

pride, and of gratitude to far-seeing parents who 
made such a home possible. 

4. The Home's Fundamental Service to Grow- 
ing Character. — It is clear that among all our social 
institutions it is the function of the home to furnish 
the boy and girl the great fundamentals of life and 
character. If they leave home lacking these, the 
home has failed in its duty. Christian homes, as a 
rule, whatever else they may fail to give them, 
succeed in endowing their children with the great 
moral safeguards. These chief safeguards of life are 
four, of which the first is self-control. From baby- 
hood all through childhood the struggle is on — the 
conquest of impulse by self-control. It takes years 
of patient nurture in every home, especially difficult 
in the case of impulsive children with strong feelings 
and active minds. This battle with self lasts through 
life, but by early teens a good degree of self-mastery 
should be acquired. There are many hard battles for 
the youth, and this is revealed in a youthful poise and 
self-possession that are good to see. In the years just 
ahead he will need all the resources he can muster. 

A part of the youth's moral capital is self-respecty 
a safeguard developed only in homes that honor the 
personality of their children. Without it he is too 
easy a prey to temptation, and he is very unlikely to 
win the respect of others. But with a normal self- 
respect, not exaggerated into conceit, he goes his way 
with a quiet dignity that opens many doors in life. 
From it grows a deepening sense of honor, which is a 



32 Community Forces for Religious Education 

great moral protection. It is an outgrowth some- 
times of family pride, but always of a noble spirit in 
the home where conscience reigns. It need not take 
the extreme form of sensitiveness to slights, which 
develops an artificial ^^ honor" too selfishly self- 
conscious to be useful or Christian. The true sense 
of honor is concerned more with duties than rights 
and determines the youth to live a clean life and an 
honest one. It helps him to conquer evil and to be 
honorable in all relations with his neighbors. Out of 
this sense of honor comes the boy's spirit of chivalry^ 
most characterisitc of this period of early youth, 
when the tales of the old chivalry are most eagerly 
read and the best lessons of knightliness make a 
permanent impression. Just as the knights of old 
showed special consideration to the weak and de- 
fenseless and special courtesy to w^omen, so our 
chivalrous lad will be kind to the aged and infirm, 
considerate of young children, and courteous to all 
women for his mother's sake. Fortunate those 
youths whose homes have furnished them with these 
fundamental safeguards — self-control, self-respect, 
honor, and the spirit of chivalry. They are equipped 
like knights of the new nobility for the battles they 
must win in later youth. 

5. Other Strong Elements in Homemade Char- 
acter. — In the old homespun days the home was a 
good deal of a workshop, with onerous tasks for the 
children; but it was also a character garden, where 
many homely virtues were grown. It is doubtful if 



Community Forces for Religious Education Z3 

some of these products of the home can be produced 
as naturally elsewhere. Patience, kindness, sympathy, 
and love are born in the home circle where mutual 
affection is the undertone in every day's life. Where 
else can these develop so beautifully and so surely? 
Truthfulness, honesty, reliability, and all ' such 
wholesome life standards are impressed upon the 
conscience of the youth, not by precept, but by the 
unvarying practice of the Christian home. Are they 
ever really acquired elsewhere if the home fails at 
this point? The sense of justice and regard for fair 
play, so fundamental in all our personal relations, 
are deepened and developed on the playground and 
the other arenas of youth; but they are usually 
born in the home. They are akin to the ideals o£ 
altruism and the unselfish attitude toward life 
which every right home teaches its children. Un- 
fortunate the youth who, without these nobler 
ideals deeply planted in his soul by a faithful home, 
enters a world of materialistic struggle for money, 
fame, and power. These ideals are as essential to his 
future as sound health and a perfect nervous system, 
which he needs to stand the moral strains of life. 

6. Religion in the Home. — Without the sense 
of reverence the homemade character is sadly in- 
complete. Homes that neglect religion shirk the 
supreme duty of the home and miss its most beauti- 
ful opportunity. There is no adequate substitute for 
home religion. Fortunate the boy who has heard his 
father pray. His memory of the family devotions will 
3 



34 Community Forces for Religious Education 

go with him through all future days. His memory of 
the quiet strength his mother gained through prayer 
will hold for years as the strongest evidence for him 
for the reality of religion. The daily acknowledg- 
ment of God's presence in the home and the parental 
dependence on his providence, shown in the custom 
of grace at meals, are real factors in religious nurture, 
helping to hold the young folks true to the faith. 
Many parents are not qualified to teach the Bible to 
their questioning lads and lassies, but they can at 
least encourage regular Bible study and habits of 
devotion and can cooperate with the Church school 
in its work in religious teaching. Both teacher and 
pastor should be trusted members of the home, on 
confidential terms with the boys and girls when 
possible, and unobtrusively aiding the home's 
religious influence. 

But religion is, after all, not a matter of formality; 
it is a way of life. Character is concrete. It simply 
involves doing and being. Home religion must find 
its climax in the life of youth in the awakening of 
the religious emotions which stir the girl and boy 
to higher living in devotion to the Christ as master 
of the life. Only thus can the mainspring of a noble 
purpose be found to give high determination and 
permanent spiritual power to the early adolescent's 
life. To this end the home should cooperate with 
the Church school to bring to the point of personal 
decision for Christ these boys and girls who are at 
the psychological moment for conversion. 



Community Forces for Religious Education 35 

7e When the Home Breaks Down. — '*The con- 
tributory negligence of parents'' is a phrase that has 
been recently creeping into our State statutes in 
connection with juvenile delinquency laws. It is a 
heart-searching expression for all parents to ponder. 
Heavy is the responsibility resting on the home in 
this matter of character education. Rare is the home 
that perfectly fulfills its obligation. For the most 
part this chapter has been considering homes of the 
better type, perhaps ideal homes. We cannot over- 
look the fact that delinquent homes are numerous, 
and carelessly neglectful homes more common still. 
Juvenile court statistics hardly furnish us the crite- 
rion for judgment. Often the parents in such cases 
must not be blamed. They are struggling nobly 
against poverty and misfortune. The homes that 
are really negligent, rich or poor, are the homes that 
neglect to teach the four great safeguards to their 
children and furnish them the moral fruits and reli- 
gious values of a faithful home life. It is idle to deny 
that there are many homes of this type, perhaps num- 
bered by the millions. Such homes, from the stand- 
point of our study, are simply breaking down under 
avoided responsibility. What shall be done when the 
home breaks down? Unless the nation is to suffer, 
some other community factor must do the work the 
home has shirked. For the sake of our boys and our 
girls whom the home neglects many other groups of 
earnest people have organized to help them live their 
life happily and usefully. We pass on, therefore, to 



36 Community Forces for Religious Education 

discover what the other community forces are 
equipped to do for our eager youth in early teens. 
We cannot pass, however, without thankfully ac- 
knowledging the millions of American homes, sound 
at heart and loyally self-sacrificing that their boys 
and girls may enter on mature life with steadfast 
faith and Christian character. 

For Discussion and Investigation 

Describe the American home in pioneer days and 
the variety of work it had to do. How do you think 
the children enjoyed it? Contrast this with the 
modern home in city and in country. Show how 
and why all other social agencies developed from 
specialized phases of home life. 

What special difficulties has tne modern city or 
suburban home in helping its boys and girls? Is the 
task harder for older parents? What causes the 
wanderlust at this age? How does parental selfish- 
ness interfere with children's rights? Suggest ways 
for a father to interest himself in his boy's fads. 
Why is this worth while? Find out what sort of 
home girls and boys in early teens like best. How 
would you furnish their rooms so as to increase their 
home loyalty and its influence upon their lives? Try 
treating a boy as if he were a year older and see what 
results you get. 

Think of some home that has developed its 
children's self-control, self-respect, and sense of 
honor, and try to explain how it was done. Do you 
believe in family pride? What methods have homes 
of your acquaintance used to overcome untruthful- 
ness? selfishness? dishonesty? to develop reliability? 
kindness? sympathy? 



Community Forces for Religious Education 37 

Describe your ideal of home religion and the way 
it works out. What proportion of the families in 
your community have some form of family worship? 
In what other special ways can home religion be 
encouraged? In what ways are some of the homes 
of your town breaking down in their influence on 
their young folks? What can be done about this? 
When is a home 'delinquent'"'? Get and discuss the 
statistics of juvenile delinquency in your community. 
Suggest ways for the Church to help the homes to 
succeed with their young folks. 

In A Social Theory of Religious Education^ Coe, 
read Chapter XV, on ''The Family," and discuss 
his main points in class. Read Chapters XI and 
XII in The Sunday School and the Teens, Alexander, 
for similar suggestions; also Fiske's chapter on 
"The Boy's Normal Home Relationships" in Boy 
Training, Alexander. Decide what functions the 
home alone can perform in this work of religious 
education in early youth. 



CHAPTER III 

THE FUNCTION OF PLAY IN CHARACTER 
DEVELOPMENT 

1. The Right to Play.— Play is the natural life 
of childhood. The childlike spirit, in young or old, 
is the playful spirit. The young of all animals play 
instinctively, but the higher the species, the longer 
they play. The play appetite is intense in all normal , 
healthy children. When a child will not play, he is 
sick either in mind or body. To prevent a child's 
playing is as bad as stealing his dinner. It starves 
him to lose either. Both food and play are essential 
to his normal health and growth. 

For boys and girls, at least, the right to liberty 
and the pursuit of happiness are summed up in the 
right to play. It would be the first article in their 
Magna Charta: ** We deixiand of our grown-up tyrants 
the right'to play.'' This is the corner stone of youth- 
ful democracy. Personality claims the chance to 
express itself in carefree, happy activities according 
to its own free will. And is it not the same in the 
world of grown-ups ? What is the age-long movement 
of democracy for social and, civic rights but the in- 
sistent protest against the tyranny of necessity and 
authority? Doubtless it is an inalienable right of 
humanity, young and old, to enjoy sufficient leisure 



Community Forces for Religious Education 39 

to give the play spirit a chance to recreate the life 
day after day. This is no mere luxury, even for 
adults; but for children and youth it is essential to 
life itself. The child's play life is his real life. Then 
alone he is doing what he chooses, free from the 
restraints and wills of others. , Child's play is ex- 
perimental living. It is not, as the Puritan supposed, 
merely a form of idleness. Many of our ancestors 
frowned on the play of children as mere amusement 
and a sheer waste of energy and precious time. Dolls 
in those days were called ''poppets,'* and little girls 
in pious homes were denied them as frivolities. At 
the earliest practicable age the children of both sexes 
Ayere put to work ''to keep them out of mischief" 
as well as for their earnings. Thus was the play 
instinct crushed out in the past. But it died hard. 
It expressed itself in many ingenious and riotous 
ways and was interpreted as evidence of the doctrine 
of original sin. This hostility to play made the 
moral and social problems of their young people 
doubly serious, for it took much of the naturalness 
and wholesomeness out of life. 

2. Why Boys and Girls Need to Play. — Our pro- 
gressive American cities have spent millions of 
dollars building and equipping public playgrounds, 
where this gospel of play may be practiced. In the 
World War millions were spent every month to 
sustain recreational centers for the soldiers of our 
armies. Was the money wasted? No; we believe it 
all helped to win the war. We believe it was needed 



40 Community Forces for Religious Education 

to maintain the morale of the army. It was not mere- 
ly to provide pastime for the soldiers or amusement 
at public expense; it was to furnish expression for 
their social natures, to bring them relief from the 
intense strain of war, to festore their mental balance, 
to open up unused resources and latent powers, and 
thus not merely to increase their contentment, but 
to safeguard their lives and make them more efficient 
soldiers. 

Even more necessary is play for younger boys and 
girls. We shall understand why if we study the 
nature and purpose of play in their lives. When we 
notice the general tendency to outgrow the play 
habit we may well ask ourselves the question: Do 
we stop playing because we grow old, or do we grow 
old because we stop playing? Herbert Spencer tried 
to explain the universal play of children on the theory 
of overflowing energy; but it is not a sufficient 
explanation, for children often play long after they 
are tired enough to stop. Children play because 
they cannot help it any more than the bee can help 
making honey. Play is instinctive; it is the child's 
nature to play. Nature's insatiable appetite for play 
is born again in the children of every generation. 
These spontaneous activities of children are but the 
overflowing of instinctive life. Thus, the little 
motherly girl plays with dolls, and the little boy with 
his hobby horse and soldiers, and the games of 
childhood change with the newly unfolding instincts 



Community Forces for Religious Education 41 

as they experiment more and more with their own 
powers and the meaning of life. 

Children play at their work and work at their 
play. In fact, as they play, though it is no mere 
imitation and not without purpose, they rehearse 
many of the details of the working life of adults. 
It is no mere rehearsal for them; it is serious living. 
The most real part of the day, for the boy and girl, is 
not the school hours, when they are simply obeying 
the behests of the teacher, but the play hours, when 
they are making their own choices and living their 
own life. This is why the subject of play has its 
rightful place in religious education. Play has vast 
moral importance, because character is formed most 
naturally in leisure hours. Character always shows 
itself most truthfully in the things we do when we 
are free. In fact, it is only when we are free to make 
choices that character develops naturally, and play 
is what we do when we are free to do as we please. 

Play is carefree, joyous self-activity. Our boys 
and girls in early youth need to play because it is 
their nature to play. They need to play to keep 
happy, well, strong, and childlike. They need to 
play to grow and develop, not merely physically, but 
mentally as well. They need to express their ideas 
and ideals in play, free from the dictation of older 
minds. They need not only the joy of play but its 
freedom from restraints, that they may live their 
own life and thus prepare for the future responsibil- 
ities of adult living. They must play for character's 



42 Community Forces for Reliigous Education 

sake, for in many ways play builds character and 
tests it constantly 
3. Moral Values in Play and Recreation. — Mrs. 

Purcell-Guild, an experienced social worker in 
Toledo, is a great believer in the moral value of 
play in the life of girls. She recently made a study 
of one hundred and thirty-one cases of girl delin- 
quents and found that most of them had missed 
adequate opportunities for play life. This fact had 
much to do with their going wrong. It was no mere 
coincidence that one hundred and ten of these way- 
ward girls had never taken part in any sort of sport, 
and only four had ever played any game. Four 
could swim, skate, play tennis or golf, and seventeen 
others could skate, with, ice skates or rollers. All 
the rest had never known the real meaning of whole- 
some play. This wise and skillful friend of girlhood 
suggests: "Every effort should be made to create an 
interest among girls in sports and games, particularly 
games calling for cooperative interest and less 
individualistic effort.'* 

Most forms of play promote good health, and this 
is no small item in good character. Every one needs 
some physical exercise; and play, suited to age and 
strength, is the most interesting form of exercise, 
with ever-changing variety. For boys and girls, 
probably the best developer of self-control is play, 
and this is a moral factor of prime importance. 
Obedience to the rules of the game is the first law 
of the playground. All through childhood and youth 



Community Forces for Religious Education 43 

this has a wholesome effect upon growing character, 
restraining unruly impulses and building up reserve 
strength to resist temptation. Play has a good effect 
upon the disposition. It increases the joy of life, 
develops cheerfulness, keeps up a healthy circulation, 
and thus promotes a wholesome condition of mind 
and body. 

Many games develop sturdiness of character. 
Grit and endurance and determination are called 
forth, and the habit of perseverance is formed, 
overcoming the childish trait of flitting from one 
interest to another and leaving things half done. 
Competitive gam^s arouse ambition and stimulate 
. the youth to do their absolute best. Hard games call 
forth genuine courage and pluck, and get the boy 
into the wholesome habit of daring to face obstacles 
and undertake hard and even dangerous tasks 
without flinching. All this puts iron into the blood 
and moral backbone into character. Thus play 
life in youth fits for heroic hard work in manhood. 
Many children learn more from each other than from 
their parents. An alert youngster, skillful at active 
games, will wake up all the sleepy children in the 
block and quicken their thinking and action. Most 
games compel quick decisions, and thus cultivate 
a habit that is both valuable in all business and 
important for morals. Quiet games, like croquet, 
checkers, and golf, allow unlimited deliberation; but 
most games popular with youth, like ball games of 
all sorts, running games, ring games, tag games, 



44 Community Forces for Religious Education 

wrestling, boxing, and tennis, require mental alert- 
ness and rapid decision. Quick judgment is con- 
stantly necessary for success. The shortstop must 
decide in a fifth of a second whether to field the ball 
home or to first or second base. A reliable authority 
on baseball asserts that *' nine-tenths of the runners 
who are safe at first in professional games reach first 
base but a fraction of a second ahead of the ball/' 
It is equally true in meeting temptation that ''he who 
hesitates is lost.'* A conscience well trained in quick 
decisions usually conquers temptations, and such a 
habit of mind is perhaps best cultivated In rapid, 
strenuous games. ^ 

Observe a boy's actions In a baseball game for half 
an hour, and you may learn .much about that boy's 
character. He soon reveals the habits the game has 
taught him, how he decides questions of right and 
wrong which the rapidly changing points of the game 
are constantly bringing to the fore. If he has really 
learned moral distinctions In his play, he will later 
apply them also to his working life. If he has 
learned to hit the line hard In football he will not 
be afraid to face obstacles* as a man; he will be able 
to throw himself with courage and zest Into the great 
fight for Ideals, whether It Is against corrupt politics, 
unfair business, or social injustice In any other 
quarter. Other things being equal, we can count on 
gallant sportsmen on the playground growing into 
valiant contestants In the great game of life. As the 
boy plays, so the grown man will do his work. 



Community Forces for Religious Education 45 

4. Loyalty to the Team. — All the moral values 
mentioned above are important in the games of 
early youth, but there is nothing in the list more 
significant for the early adolescent to learn and prac- 
tice than the spirit of loyalty. Loyalty, except 
loyalty to home, is not a childish characteristic; but 
it is one of the finest fruits of the life of youth. The 
little fellow in the sixth or seventh grade is still an 
individual player in the game of life. He plays a lone 
hand. Looking out for number one is still his first 
impulse. In many ways he is frankly selfish, in all 
respects self-centered. This is the way of a child. 
But when he comes over the bridge into youth, a 
new spirit comes — or should come — over him. It 
comes in deepening, broadening friendships; it 
comes in a stronger sense of personal duty; it is born 
of hero worship of a winsome leader; it is the spirit 
of loyalty. It is the spirit that binds him to his kind 
in all the comradeships of life. Loyalty is the heart 
of friendship and it is the soul of religion. Loyalty is 
what makes possible a permanent home, a stable 
nation, and a strong State, trustworthy business 
relations — in fact, any sort of group, club. Church, or 
society that depends on fraternal cooperation for its 
life and usefulness. For any sort of success or hap- 
piness we human beings learn to be loyal. 

Now, it is in the chivalrous period of the early 
teens, especially among boys, that loyalty is best 
cultivated. Rightly stimulated, it grows then by 
leaps and bounds. Consciousness of kind, discovered 



46 Community Forces for Religious Education 

with all the power of a fresh discovery in the mystic 
circle of the boy's gang, sometimes develops a loy- 
alty that will survive the severest testing, even to 
reversing the boy's moral code when the group 
demands it. The most wholesome development of 
loyalty is in the team-play games, which become 
popular in the early teens. The social practice of 
the playground teaches boys to get along better with 
each other, to forget the individual in the welfare 
of the group, to wait in patience for one's turn at the 
bat, to make a sacrifice hit instead of a grandstand 
play. Loyalty to the team requires self-sacrifice. 
The individual for the time being is nothing, the 
group everything. It may be a narrow loyalty, but 
it is the beginning of altruism and a cooperative 
citizenship. 

What is true of boys in this regard will be in- 
creasingly true of girls of this age also, though it 
may not have been so in the past. Only a dozen 
years ago a leading play expert. Dr. Gulick, made 
this surprising statement in an address at Elgin, 111. 
''The women of the world have never played any 
team games. We have no record in all the ages of a 
single team game that women ever played. Their 
road to altruism has been the road of the home." 
This striking statement, true perhaps when he said 
it, is no longer true. Our healthy young girls, in an 
outdoor age, are at last playing all sorts of team-play 
games and, just like their brothers, are learning 



Community Forces for Religious Education 47 

cooperation, unselfishness, and loyalty on the play- 
ground. 
5. Jonathan the Best Sportsman in the Bible.— 

Good sportsmanship is worthy of all the universal 
admiration it has won. The gospel of play deserves 
a place in the work of religious education because it 
surely develops this type of character. To be a 
cheerful loser or a generous winner and always to 
play square is to be a good sport. Among Bible 
characters one young man stands out prominently as 
the best sportsman of them all. It is the attractive 
young prince Jonathan, the son of Saul. Read the 
untarnished record of his life, and you will find it an 
illustration of noble and unselfish sportsmanship. 
There was none braver than Jonathan, not even the 
much praised Daniel. He had courage unlimited, 
facing a small army of Philistines once almost single- 
handed. With only his armor-bearer he scaled a 
precipice and drove his astonished enemies from their 
supposedly impregnable position on the heights. 
He was a famous marksman with the long bow, his 
favorite sport, and he loved to shoot in the field with 
his friend David. His high sportsmanship is most 
clearly seen in his treatment of his young rival, the 
shepherd of Bethlehem. Had it not been for David, 
Jonathan's claim to the throne would have been 
unchallenged; but the splendid young prince loved 
his friend David more than his father's crown. He 
conquered all jealousy, and his treatment of David is 
matchless for its courtesy and chivalry. When the 



48 Community Forces for Religious Education 

young shepherd killed Goliath and leaped suddenly 
into popular favor, the prince Jonathan gave him his 
own bow and sword and royal robe. And as years 
went by and David grew in personal power and in 
Jehovah's favor, and it became evident that he was 
destined to be king in place of Jonathan, the young 
prince showed remarkable sportsmanship by being a 
good loser. Under most trying circumstances, and 
even at the peril of his life, he continued to treat David 
as his best friend. 

6, The Gospel of Play in Rural Life. — This gospel 
of play has made more progress in the city than in 
the country. City playgrounds are too common to 
attract much notice, but it is a rare village that has 
even a respectable baseball diamond. Tennis 
courts, except in wealthy suburbs, in the country are 
still rarer. ^^ Now they are going to teach the children 
to play!'' was the sarcastic comment of a rural 
Yankee when the first echo of the recreation move- 
ment reached his village. It seemed to him a ludi- 
crous waste of time, like bringing coals to Newcastle, 
to teach games to children, who waste too much time 
playing anyway. Such a mental attitude is still all 
too common in rural life. Country people work 
laboriously, especially eight months of the year, with 
scant time for wholesome recreation, and they often 
do not realize the play needs of their children. The 
social hungers of country young folks are deep and 
insistent. The climax is seldom reached in the eatly 
teens. It is in middle youth that these fun-hungry 



Community Forces for Religious Education 49 

boys and girls desert the farms for the city, not so 
much for money as for social opportunity; but all 
through early youth, when play life is lacking, the 
farm boy and girl nurse a growing discontent that 
soon becomes ominous and imperious. Prevalent 
immorality in many a decadent village has been the 
direct result of local neglect of the social and rec- 
reational needs of the young people. On the other 
hand, the progressive rural community is more and 
more numerous in which the happiness and efficiency 
of the young people have been multiplied by the intro- 
duction of the gospel of play with many plans for 
wholesome recreation. A variety of games and 
social programs adapted to rural life will be found in 
Dr. Curtis's suggestive book, Play and Recreation in 
the Open Country, 

7. Play in the Program of Religious Education. 
— ^Any newly organized community council of religious 
education, in surveying the needs of the community 
in relation to character education, will find one of 
their most pressing problems to be the improvement 
of the play life of their young folks. Rare indeed is 
the community like Gary, where for years play and 
recreation have been an integral part of the public 
school curriculum, and supervised play has been a 
regular . factor in the child's education. Too fre- 
quently the unsupervised play in public school 
recesses or the degenerate loafing that occupies the 
play time is the greatest menace to the moral life of 
both boys and girls. Community leaders in reli- 
4 



50 Community Forces for Religious Education 

gious education should discover the facts, whatever 
they are, and plan their program accordingly. If 
the public school is avoiding this, let the Church 
school take on the task of teaching interesting games 
and new forms of recreation to fill the social vacuum 
in empty lives, and set the boys and girls to playing 
for character's sake. Then the program should set 
about the broadening of their interests, to enrich 
their lives and furnish the basis for real spiritual 
development. This will include guidance in reading, 
nature study, and the development of nature hobbies, 
the utilizing of the environment and its resources, 
whatever they may be — woods, river, shore, or 
mountains, woodcraft, watercraft, and aquatics, 
campcraft, athletics, in infinite variety — the plans 
changing from year to year, but all serving to broaden 
the life of the young folks and to help them in self- 
expression and that development which is the basis 
of character. Incidentally such programs of personal 
service will win such appreciation as to give the 
leaders the finest possible chance for personal in- 
fluence in intimate and trusted friendships. Build 
your religious education plans on the solid foundation 
of a wholesome play and recreation program and you 
may build your spiritual structure thereon as high 
and broad as you please, for you have won the grate- 
ful confidence of your boys and girls. 

Well supervised moving pictures are needed in 
every community for educational as well as social 
purposes, though they are seldom an unmixed good. 



Community Forces for Religion^ Education 51 

Boys and girls of twelve to fourteen years, however, 
do not derive from the ''movies" as much practical 
value as older adolescents do, and many find them 
tiresome. They are a very poor substitute for 
genuine play in these years of restless activity. 
The ''movies" furnish relaxation for adults and fun 
for children often; but many active adolescents are 
bored by them. 

Play is to be encouraged for its own sake, not as 
mere habit to lure them within range of the gospel. 
We must not lose sight of the fact that play actually 
helps to educate our children and to train their 
characters. Its most strategic influence is upon the 
imagination. In Play in Education, by Lee, we find 
a beautiful chapter entitled ^'The Need to Dream," 
in which he suggests that the translation of ideals 
into action is the big businCvSS of life and asserts that 
the important part of this life process is dreaming — 
that is, imagining. We always have to build our air 
castles before we can realize them in wood or brick 
or stone. ^* The child must learn to mind his images," 
says Athearn, speaking of the vast importance of 
the child's imagination and the ideals he forms there. 
The self-control needed in the battle for character is 
gained when imagination's purest visions become 
effective, dominant ideals. To stimulate these 
youthful visions, so necessary for future success and 
for growing character, the surest means is a well- 
organized curriculum of play, romantic literature, 
music, dramatics, pageantry, and all wholesome 



vS2 Cojnmunity Forces for Religious Education 

recreation. These will help to make holy the dreams 
of happy youth and furnish something of moral 
passion to attain them. 

For Investigation and Discltssion. 

Define play. Explain why a child's most real life 
is his play life. How do you account for a child's 
insatiable appetite for play? In what ways is your 
community interfering with the children's right to 
play? 

Have you city or village playgrounds? If so, find 
out what moral results have been gained? Contrast, 
if you can get the data, the statistics of juvenile 
delinquency before and since provision for play- 
grounds was made. Why did our people spend so 
much during the war for army recreation centers? 
Was it worth while? 

When, if ever, should the play habit be outgrown? 
Why does this subject of play have its rightful place 
in our program of religious education? Why do 
young folks in early teens need to play? What have 
you discovered to be the effect upon girls, either in 
city or country, when they have had little or no 
play life? Are American girls playing games more 
than formerly? Why? 

What are some of the mental results of play? 
Explain how it effects the disposition. What games 
for early youth best develop self-control, obedience, 
alertness, initiative, perseverence, quick decision, 
courage, endurance, ideals of right conduct? In. 
your own case what games proved most valuable for 
development? Watch three different boys and girls 
at play for half an hour and note how their game 
reveals their character. 

Study playground conduct to see how social prac- 



Community Forces for Religious Education 53 

tice in play develops loyalty and unselfishness, 
particularly in team-play games. How will this 
help teamwork in mature life? 

Describe your ideal of good sportsmanship. What 
Bible character best illustrates it? Do you find in 
your community high ideals of fair play? Do the 
boys **play square" in baseball? Do the girls cheat 
at tennis or hockey? Watch to see if they are gen- 
erous winners and good losers. Study methods 
of improvement here. 

In your judgment which needs the gospel of play 
more — the city or country? What do boys and girls 
in the country need for recreation which the average 
rural community lacks? Report on the results you 
have known to follow the introduction of a com- 
munity program of recreation. Find data on this in 
Curtis's suggestive book, Play and Recreation in the 
Open Country, 

What has been the moral effect of moving-picture 
shows in your community? Have you done all you 
can to make them a positive force for character? 
Read on this Morse's chapter on ''The Morals of the 
Movies" in Fear God in Your Own Village. 

For many concrete suggestions on the moral 
value of recreation, study Education through Play, 
Curtis, especially Chapters IV, IX, and X. 

Study Chapter VII, in Education for Social 
Efficiency, King, for a scholarly presentation of the 
topic of play as a factor in social efficiency; and 
Chapter VII in Principles of Charatcer Making, 
Holmes, for an interesting history of play. The best 
textbook for our purposes is Gates's admirable 
handbook Recreation and the Church. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE FUNCTION OF WORK IN CHARACTER 
DEVELOPMENT. 

1. The Difference Between Work and Play. — In 

its broadest sense work is the use of energy. Thus, a 
machine can work, though it cannot play. It takes 
a spirit to play, for the spirit of play is the spirit of 
life. We usually think of work, however, as produc- 
tive activity for gain or livelihood. Unproductive 
work is simply work poorly done or badly conceived. 
It is imitation work, not the real thing. To call 
everything work which is difficult, laborious, dis- 
agreeable, is really a slander. Let us call all such 
tasks * drudgery'' and save the good word *^work'' 
for better uses. Work is constructive, purposeful, 
serviceable. It aims to accomplish some definite 
thing. It exercises talent, utilizes strength, expresses 
personal power, with some result in mind which is 
desirable for itself or for the reward it brings. That 
reward may be money or some precious thing more 
valuable than money, such as friendship or good 
will. The real purposes of life can only be accom- 
plished by work. Without it there is no achieve- 
ment. 

(54) 



Community Forces for Religious Education 55 

Some one, in trying to explain this to children, 
'expressed it thus: 

*^ There is work that is work; 
There is play that is play; 
There is play that is work; 
There is work that is play; 

And one of these four 

I^ the very best way!" 

This play upon words finds its truth in the fact that 
often the spirit and purpose of activity determine 
whether it is play or work. Baseball in the alley or 
on the sand lots is just play for pure fun; but a 
professional player turns it into work for fifty dollars 
a game. He is not really playing. He is working for 
his livelihood, to support a family. Yet the ''very 
best way/' at which our rhymester hints, is to put the 
spirit of play into our work, and thus save it from 
drudgery. It remains work, however, even though 
we enjoy it, if it is productive activity for gain or 
livelihood. Let us agree that both play and work are 
necessary for a growing character, each for its own 
sake; and that work can be — and should be — just as 
enjoyable as play. Too many men, as they grow 
older, enjoy only their work and take recreation as 
medicine! One secret of a wholesome life is to value 
rightly both work and play and take each in right 
proportion, doing both with zest, like a true sports- 
man. 

2. The Tragedy of a Life without Work.— Too 
many laborers think of work as what they have to do 



56 Community Forces for Religious Education 

which they don't want to do. Though responsible for 
their own choice of a lifework, they hate it, call them- 
selves wage slaves, with an accent of self-pity, and 
slight their work at every opportunity. There are too 
many such workmen in the ranks of industry. To 
be sure, we should have sympathy for the toilers 
who are obliged to do the uninteresting tasks that 
only machines should be compelled to perform and 
which machines ultimately will be built to do. This 
does not excuse any man, however, for working with 
the heart of a slave and pitying himself because he 
has to work. His blunder is in regarding leisure as 
the greatest blessing and work as a curse. Oftener 
it proves just the reverse. More people are ruined 
by leisure than by work. Labor was not ''the curse 
of Eden,*' after all; the real curse was the empty 
leisure that led straight to temptation. Adam needed 
a steady job. Regular work has been one of the 
greatest factors in civilizing the race. The laborer 
who is eager to give his employer the shortest pos- 
sible day's work for his day's wage is on a false 
trail. Work is not an evil to be avoided; it is a 
blessing to be thankful for. We should welcome work 
as one of the greatest of all builders of character; 
and this attitude must be acquired , if ever, in youth. 
Most people now are wise enough to know that to 
bring up a child to a life of mere leisure is to curse 
him with riches and condemn him to uselessness. 
For a boy to grow up empty-handed, except for the 
toys of life when there ought to be tools in his hand 



Community Forces for Religious Education 57 

IS a profound mistake. The American Magazine for 
August, 1921, describes how the son of a multimil- 
Honalre escaped from a hfe of elegant leisure and 
found real satisfaction in newspaper work. The 
ambition to express his personality in some worth- 
while labor was a real hunger in the young man's 
soul. He wanted to work. He shrank from a wasted 
life of useless, ill-spent leisure. Happy the man with 
a skilled trade or trained for a useful profession. One 
of the tragedies of life is to be workless, jobless, 
with unskilled hands that fit no tool and a brain 
unused to service. In a world where the cost of 
happiness is usefulness, you cannot really be happy 
without work. 

3. Why Boys and Girls Need to Work. — Work is 
one of the agencies of religious education because it 
is a powerful factor in the making of character. If 
our character is our usual mode of being and doing, 
then the way we do our work fixes some of the most 
important habits that form our character. Our 
work should be the highest product of our lives. 
Through it we express our noblest purposes and thus 
develop the best that is in our natures. Even in early 
youth many a boy is restless and discontented. 
He wonders what in the world he is for and what 
God intends him to do with his manhood. If he 
discovers some latent talent or skill, it gives him a 
new self-respect as his dreams of a useful manhood 
take on more tangible form. It is not likely that the 
future vocation will be settled in these early years, 



58 Community Forces for Religious Education 

but it is not too early to dream about it and experi- 
ment with it. The five-or ten-talented boy will 
imagine himself in all sorts of callings. In his day 
dreams he will pass through ten or a dozen forms of 
vocational usefulness while he tries himself out with 
various kinds of tools in his father's workshop, 
factory, or farm. Quite aside from all this, our boys 
and girls need the regular work in the home, suited 
to their strength and capacity, to put strength and 
fiber into character, to develop reliability, responsi- 
bility, initiative, manual skill and dexterity, mental 
alertness, patience, self-control. If they have a 
natural tendency to shirk, to get more time for play, 
they need to learn that life is not all play time. They 
need to get the habit of attacking hard work like a 
glorious game and to find the zest in overcoming 
difficulties. They will soon discover that their share 
in the work of the home is a character laboratory in 
which they are setting their ideals of right and wrong 
and thus growing a personal conscience in the 
process. Honesty in work, accuracy and prompt- 
ness, dogged perseverance, complete faithfulness to 
duty, sacred regard for promises, honor in handling 
materials and tools owned by others, all help to 
develop in work the good will that is at the heart of 
character. Boys and girls of twelve to fourteen 
find in the home the best place to work and learn 
these lessons. Regular wage earning is often pos- 
sible, however, in school vacations, but the work 
should be of the lighter sort and never under un- 



Community Forces for Religious Education 59 

healthful or unwholesome conditions, preferably out 
of doors, as suggested under subtopic 5 of this chap- 
ter. A reasonable amount of appropriate work is 
needed by our boys and girls in early youth to develop 
their latent manliness or womanliness, which ought 
to be coming fast all through this bridge period 
between childhood and maturity. The boy of 
fourteen, who never works and always plays, is 
doomed to childish youth and a postponed manhood. 

4. Fun in the Daily Task. — If the parents of our 
young folks are the work-hating sort of people, it 
will be difficult to overcome their influence. But it is 
vitally important to teach the boys and girls a 
wholesome attitude toward work. If they would be 
of use in the world, they should not only face the 
necessity of a workra-day life; they should come to 
regard work as their friend, not their enemy, even in 
disguise. They should also discover in work a vast 
reservoir of happiness. Rightly viewed, work is a 
great game; a strenuous, uphill game, with plenty of 
hazards and obstacles, but none the less a game. 
We should teach boys and girls to find fun in the 
daily task. If they keep their eyes open they w^ill 
discover plenty of people all around them who get 
their deepest satisfactions out of their regular work. 
An important part of the work of this training course 
is to help the teachers to interpret to their boys and 
girls the reasons so many people really enjoy working. 

Let us think of some of the real satisfactions pos- 
sible In all good work. To begin with, there is always 



60 Community Forces for Religious Education 

a natural pleasure in natural functioning. We seem 
to have been born to work. Brains were made to 
think with and muscles to undergo strain. There is 
an elemental joy just in exercising both brain and 
brawn at honest labor. Cheat a body out of normal 
work, and muscle and brain grow flabby, weak, and 
unhealthy, and the soul unhappy. A person in good 
health enjoys exertion, partly because it keeps him 
healthy. A Cleveland society woman, convicted of 
murdering her husband, was sentenced to life im- 
prisonment. When taken to prison, after recovering 
from the nervous shock caused by her trial, her first 
request was to be set at work. She could not stand 
the thought of an empty-handed life. She begged 
for a chance to do some worth-while work to keep 
her sane and reasonably happy. 

Then, there is the joy of wielding power — one of 
the universal joys of life. There is a fascination in 
wielding or directing any sort of power — t\rith the 
locomotive throttle, the automobile steering wheel, 
the reins of a fast horse, the electric button that 
starts the mighty turbines in an ocean liner or dis- 
charges the half-ton shell of TNT — but, most of all, 
the personal power involved in one's own lifework at 
its best. The joy of achievement is another of the 
priceless rewards of work. There is keen satisfaction 
in accomplishing results worth while, especially in 
competition or under special difificulties. This joy 
in producing values, in growing or making products 
that the world needs, gives one the feeling of success. 



Community Forces for Religious Education 61 

Farmers, as a class, have developed a new class- 
consciousness and self-respect since they discovered 
in war time how the world depends on them for food 
and the primary essentials of life. This has added 
dignity and quiet satisfaction to every intelligent 
tiller of the soil. The construction of worth-while 
goods gives joy to the artisan, the inventor, the 
manufacturer. All have learned that they are needed 
in the world, and that they have found their place, 
their niche in life. As the great Aquitania, of the 
Cunard line, was launched on the Clyde, two of the 
skilled riveters, who had faithfully labored on the 
hull for many months, watched her slide gracefully 
down the ways : One of them was overheard saying 
proudly to the other, 'Mt's something, now, to have 
hammered the rivets on such a boat as that.'' 

In many kinds of work there is the joy of cooperat- 
ing for general welfare. All good work is really 
service, and the satisfaction is twofold when people 
work together. Some work is solitary, especially in 
rural life; but most work is a partnership and is 
done with the keen social stimulus of cooperation. 
Even farm work is not so solitary as it sometimes 
appears. The prairie farmer, cultivating a thousand- 
acre wheat farm, with furrows a mile long, though he 
may hear no voice from breakfast until dinner but 
the hoarse bark of his gasoline tractor, may still 
imagine the deep undertone of myriad voices calling 
to him for bread and offering him in return their 
own products, as well as their gold and their grati- 



62 Community Forces for Religious Education 

tude as the great world's partnership works on. In 
the clamor and clang of a great factory, also, the 
social factor of cooperation is often a real fascination 
to the workers. Having a personal share in any great 
enterprise that requires many hands and many 
minds is in itself a joy, like pulling an oar in an eight- 
oared shell or playing one's part in a great orchestra. 
It will not be difficult to prove to the boys that 
some of the joys of real sport are often found in work 
also. There are elements of risk and danger in 
many forms of labor as truly as in football — for 
instance, in railroading, mining, seafaring, and the 
manufacture of explosives. Much of the fascination 
in such work lies in the avoidance of danger through 
skill and good judgment. Work often has elements 
of chance, uncertainty, and true adventure. These 
add novelty and constant interest for the genuine 
sportsman and also gives him plenty of opportunity 
to indulge in the play spirit. But, best of all, 
for thoughtful persons anxious to make their lives 
count for the utmost, is the lasting joy of service 
which all truly productive work affords. There is 
deep human satisfaction in just helping people, and 
this is the best sort of pay a man can receive for his 
work. Fortunate the person who can do work of 
this kind. The Advertising Club of America has a 
working creed with a noble challenge in it: ^^The- 
first requisite of success is not to achieve the dollar 
but to confer a benefit.'^ When the world really finds 
the truth in this great Christian principle, which 



Community Forces for Religious Education 63 

Jesus himself taught very plainly, we shall find the 
deepest secret In joyous work. 
5. The Misfortune of the Child Wage-Earner.— 

It should be self-evident that both the burdens and 
joys of work should be only gradually assumed. 
Work is the avocation, not the chief business, of 
early youth. In civilized life no boy or girl of twelve 
to fourteen summers should be a regular wage-earner. 
They should be in school throughout the early teens. 
Vacations and holidays furnish ample time to get 
their work habits started and to acquire the character 
values of work of which we have been thinking. A 
very small proportion of widows' families seem to need 
the earnings of young boys and girls; but it is cheaper 
for the State to provide mothers' pensions than to 
allow premature child labor. Far more numerous 
are those homes in which the avarice of parents 
conspires with the ambition of the boys and girls and 
their dislike of school, resulting in arrested develop- 
ment and stunted lives. 

Both State and Federal laws are now grappling 
with this evil; but there is still a vast amount of 
injurious premature bearing of work burdens by 
early adolescents. Outdoor work, outside of school 
hours, such as the lighter work connected with farm- 
ing, is usually healthful and desirable for boys of this 
age. The tragedy of premature wage-earning is 
found in the breakers of coal mines, in the spinning 
rooms of cotton factories, in the superheated glass 
factories, and in a variety of sweatshops in congested 



64 Commtmify Forces for Religious Education 

city tenements. It is slow work crushing out this 
evil because it is so profitable, especially for short- 
sighted parents; but it is a sin against the race as well 
as the individuals who are thus, cheated out of their 
normal youth, for such labor is at the cost of health, 
happiness, education, and future efhciency. While 
the great misfortune at this period is regular and 
continuous daily labor, there is also danger in lesser 
degree in the so-called ^'blind-alley trades/' Instead 
of planning for the largest possible usefulness, the 
greater mass of boys and girls tend to drift along 
lines of least resistance. They discover no vocational 
aptitude or life purpose and early get pocketed in 
some industrial blind alley such as newsboy, cash 
girl, messenger, or delivery work. Such employment 
is easy to drift into, but it leads nowhere except into 
the ranks of unskilled labor and a life of discontent. 
Boys and girls of this age, in undertaking such work 
in vacations and leisure hours, should regard it as 
only makeshift wage-earning, while they definitely 
plan and prepare for something more worthy and 
rewarding. 

6. Learning Property Rights and Money Values. 
-*-The difficulty in an increasing number of American 
homes is not child labor but child loafing. Happy the 
country boy and girl with plenty of chances for 
healthy and rewarding work about the home. In 
city and suburban homes, especially in crowded 
tenements, microscopic flats, and too luxurious 
apartments, without even a coal bin or a wood box. 



Community Forces for Religious Education 65 

there is all too meager opportunity for the boys and 
girls to get in normal ways the moral values of work. 
Too many children, entering their teens, have little 
sense of the value of money and no conception of 
property rights. They will never know what a 
dollar is worth until they work hard to earn it. Nor 
will they realize what property ownership means until 
they experience it. Petty thievery and malicious 
mischief are far more commonly the sport of the 
thoughtless youngster who has nothing he can 
really call his own. We must teach our boys and girls 
the sacredness of ■ property rights, upon which at 
least the material side of our civilization rests. They 
should not pass through early teens without finding 
the meaning of owning property, on a small scale, as 
the result of their own honest labor. A boy with his 
own bank book does not become a juvenile delin- 
quent. He will not maliciously injure other people's 
property if he has a little of his own. He belongs 
to **the haves,'' not the reckless ''have nots," and 
swiftly he gets the mental attitude of true conserva- 
tism, which is the fundamental safeguard of a 
State. For this purpose, when family finances per- 
mit it, and opportunities for casual work are few, the 
boys and girls should be given a reasonable weekly 
allowance, not simply to spend , but to save and invest. 
They should be guided in the use of it and should 
render strict account of it. Rightly used, an allow- 
ance will train them in thrift, economy, business 
judgment, discriminating generosity, and financial 
5 



66 Cofnmunity Forces for Religious Education 

responsibility, and will make large contribution to 
their moral education. Whenever possible they 
should earn their allowance by sharing the household 
burdens and entering daily with zest and good will 
into the human partnership of the family life. 

7. The Highest Motive in the Working World •— 
It is possible to transfigure the daily task by the 
religious spirit. When we stop to think of it, it is 
rather remarkable what a large proportion of the 
teachings of Jesus deal with the practical matters of 
daily work. Persons who fancy that work has noth- 
ing to do with religion or religious education have 
this fact to reckon with. The whole level of industry 
is being gradually raised by the introduction of the 
spirit and the principles of Jesus the carpenter. By 
and by the working world's attitude toward labor 
will be exalted by the discovery that God himself 
is the eternal toiler. They who regard all work as a 
curse should ponder this. Jesus said: ^^My Father 
worketh even until now, and I work.'* If we think 
of God as creating the universe in six days of twenty- 
four hours each, and then resting throughout eter- 
nity, we are wide of the mark. According to Jesus, 
our Father, God, is a continuous toiler, an unwearied 
creator. The highest purposes of God are seen not in 
the physical world, but in his majestic plan for devel- 
oping a redeemed humanity to glorify him and crown 
his age-long creation. Through eons of struggle he 
has been working with men to produce his ideal— a 
self-controlled man and a self-governed State. 



Community Forces for Religious Education 67 

Against the opposition of all tyrants God has been 
working out his democracy of brotherhood , and in this 
great task he has enlisted all the great and good 
souls of history. All men and women and children 
of good will are called by God to work with him in 
the supreme task of making a better world. As Paul 
wrote long ago: *^We are God's fellow workers.'' 
This is a mighty incentive to all who work and think 
as they work. It makes all true work a genuine sacra- 
ment. It makes all who labor at any sort of service 
the comrades of the working God, *Hhe Toiler more 
old than toil." 

For Investigation and Discussion. 

What kinds of work are drudgery for you? For a 
boy or girl of tvi^elve to fourteen? What kind do you 
enjoy most? What do intermediate pupils most 
enjoy? How would you define the difference be- 
tween work and play? Show how the spirit you put 
into it changes both work and play. 

Do you know a person who never works? Is he 
happy? Do you call him fortunate or unfortunate? 
Is leisure a blessing or a curse? Qualify your last 
answer. What was really the ''curse of Eden"? 
Talk with three labor union men and find whether 
they avoid all the work they can or are doing the 
most they can. Explain why work is necessary to 
happiness. Why are you going to bring up your 
children to work? 

Does work have anything to do with religion? 
Why did Jesus have so much to say about it? Show 
how one's work reveals one's character. Why do our 
youth in the early teens need some regular tasks? 



68 Community Forces for Religious Education 

What qualities of character can work develop 
in them? How does work develop manliness in a 
boy? What work should boys and girls do in the 
home? 

What real satisfactions have you found in work? 
How would you show a girl that there is real fun in 
working? Explain the joy in wielding power. Ex- 
plain the joy in producing values, in achievement, in 
teamwork for the common good, in all real service. 
Illustrate these from your own experience. 

Can you think of any sort of work that has none 
of the foregoing values? Then is it worth doing at 
all? Should it and can it be done by machinery? 
What is the moral effect of unskilled labor? What 
can be done about it? How make drudgery endur- 
able? 

In what kind of work have you found elements of 
real sport? Explain the fascination of dangerous 
employment for many people. How can you teach 
boys and girls to turn work into play and thus get 
real fun out of it? 

Are there any regular wage-earning children in 
your community under fifteen? Find out how many, 
at each year of age. How much of this child labor 
is necessary? Who is to blame for it? Could it not 
all be confined to holidays and school vacations? 
Explain the evils of child labor in various trades. 
Why are *' blind-alley trades" such subtle evils in 
these early teen years? Find out the child-labor 
law in your State and how well it is enforced. 

Is child loafing a menace in your community? 
How are your young folks learning the true value of 
.money? What happens when boys and girls have 
nothing they can call their own? Explain the moral 
results of a bank account. Why do you believe in 
the allowance plan for boys and girls? How are your 



Community Forces for Religious Education 69 

boys and girls being taught property rights? Why 
is this essential to their moral education? 

In Childhood and Character, Hartshorne, study 
Chapters XV and XVI to understand the difference 
between work and play and how life can be better 
balanced by merging them. 

In Play and Education, Lee, read Chapter XXXII 
for an interesting discussion of the topic of drudgery; 
and study thoughtfully the fine discussion of the 
character values of work in the first part of What 
Men Live By, Cabot. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL AS AN AGENCY 
OF MORAL AND SPIRITUAL TRAINING. 

1. The Junior High Schoors Task with the 
Early Teens. — Possibly the most critical years in the 
school life of our boys and girls are these years in 
early adolescence. They are the years that deter- 
mine the future course of life, whether it be upward 
through the gateway of high education or along the 
dead levels of unskilled labor in shop or factory. Yet 
our American schools break down oftenest at exactly 
this critical point — between the elementary schools 
and the high schools. The restless boy, weary of 
formal education, and not naturally studious, longs 
for his day of release, when, at fourteen or sixteen, 
the State allows him to leave his hated school bench 
and find premature manhood at daily labor. With 
peculiar ineptitude our seventh- and eighth-grade 
schools in the average community still largely ignore 
this boy's indictment and continue to treat him like 
the child he was. To the chagrin of both teachers and 
parents his wasted days multiply. The school is not 
fitting him for life. It prepares him for nothing 
whatever. So complains his father as he grudgingly 
pays his school taxes. 
(7Q) 



Community Forces for Religious Education 71 

It IS this situation, so general a decade ago, which 
produced the junior high school and has made it so 
popular and wide-spread throughout the country in 
progressive towns and cities. Reducing the senior 
high school years to three, it takes the seventh and 
eighth grades, with the freshman high school year, 
and gives them special consideration appropriate 
to this *' bridge period'' of the early teens. By thus 
reducing the elementary school years to six and dig- 
nifying this transition period of early youth by a 
transfer to the high school campus, the use of high 
school methods and the broader curriculum, richer 
in its life interests and usefulness, the problem of the 
early teens has been very much simplified. The 
crowded ranks of high schools to-day are partly due 
to the success of the junior high school, as the transi- 
tion is made easy into senior high school, more 
appropriate courses are offered the rapidly growing 
beys and girls on the verge of adolescence, their 
latent vocational interests are discovered and en- 
couraged, new ambitions for life are stimulated, and 
the inspirational results of real education are shown 
in growing character. These same results are in a 
measure attained, to be sure, in many places where- 
the old system of the grades stilt survives, but only 
when skillful and devoted teachers work hard to 
overcome the unnatural difficuf^ties of their ** gram- 
mar school" tasks. In either case, under the old 
regime or the new, the school life of these active 
years is vastly significant for the building of char- 



72 Community Forces for Religious Education 

acter, hence highly important for religious education 
leaders to study and utilize. 

3. The Religious Limitations of a Public School 
System. — It seems easy to some enthusiasts for moral 
training to shift the whole burden to the shoulders 
of public school teachers. They are ever demanding 
that religion be taught in the schools. The children 
need it. Why not use the public school equipment 
for this noble purpose? Meanwhile our Roman 
Catholic friends call them '* godless schools '* because 
they do not teach formal religion. Such people 
ignore the Federal Constitution, which guarantees the 
separation of Church and State and the freedom of 
religion as fundamental safeguards in our democracy. 

We must not expect the impossible of our public 
schools. They could not be democratic and teach 
religion to our mixed population. With Romanists, 
Jews, and some two hundred Protestant sects , and 
various kinds of pagans, citizens together under the 
United States flag, it is evident that no one of these 
sects, except in the rare community where all are 
of the same faith, could be granted the privilege of 
teaching religion in tax-supported schools without 
. infringing on religious liberty. Not only would it be 
unconstitutional; it would not be fair. Our children 
must be taught religion, but we must not take advan- 
tage of majority power to enforce such teaching in tax- 
supported schools. We must plan otherwise. 

However, this limitation on the teaching of religion 
has nothing to do with the simple, devotional reading 



Community Forces for Religious Education 73* 

of the Bible without sectarian comment or instruc« 
tion. This appropriate custom is allowed in many 
States, and in some it is prescribed by law. It is no 
substitute, of course, for religious education, and we 
must not expect too much from it. Merely reading 
the Bible :3 not teaching it, and often the exercise is 
very perfunctory. It is probable also that the laws 
would allow the teaching of the essentials of religion, 
which are common to all sects, though it would be 
extremely difficult for a teacher to teach them with- 
out sectarian bias. There is much to be said also 
for Dr. Draper's plea for the Christian spirit in 
American schools on the ground that *^ Christianity 
is overwhelmingly the religion of the United States. 
It is in the warp and woof of our laws 
and recognized in all our State papers.'' Yet this 
same educational leader warns us against the 
teaching of sectarianism as an infringement upon 
our civil liberty. 

2. The Moral Influence of American High 
Schools. — ^Yetdespite these limitations our high schools 
have profound moral influence. Often this influence 
is genuinely spiritual, thanks to the religious earnest- 
ness of Christian teachers who regard character as 
the highest goal of education. As Professor Wilm 
beautifully says: ''There are those rare characters 
among teachers under whose magic touch the most 
intractable and unpromising material is transmuted 
mto gold. Religion or irreligion will be present in 
i^he school just as surely as teachers are present. V 



74 Community Forces for Religious Education 

is they who have it in their power to determine 
that indefinable but very real thing called the at- 
mosphere and tone of the school." Another moral 
factor to be recokened with is the mutual influence of 
the pupils themselves. School comrades are natur- 
ally among the most powerful niolders of character, 
leaving a lasting mark upon life for good or evil. 
Young Men's Christian Association leaders have 
discovered schools in which lamentably low morals 
prevailed. A few dominating rascals had succeeded 
in undermining the moral life of the school by setting 
low standards and making them popular. Yet in 
many another school an inner circle of Christian boys 
and girls quietly determine that the spirit of the 
school shall be straightforward, chivalrous, clean, and 
definitely Christian. It all depends on the sort of 
nucleus that really dominates the school life. 

The regular program of the school, too, if it is 
truly educational, produces moral results. On this 
point Draper states his convictions emphatically: 
''Every influence of the schoolroom promotes moral 
growth. A system which commands regularity, 
punctuality, cleanliness, studiousness, and obedience; 
which exacts politeness and generosity toward 
associates and respect for authority; which arouses 
ambition and inspires courage; which exalts truth 
and is administered with justice; which rests upon 
the hearts of a Christian people and reaches up into 
the realms of heaven, can in its beneficient operation 
produce nothing less than moral growth and devel- 



Community Forces for Religious Eudcation IS 

opment/' It may not be easy to bring the actual 
standard of our local school up to this high ideal. 
It certainly will not unless we develop an inner circle 
of the right type among the.boys and girls and unless 
the teachers supervise constantly the entire school 
plant, especially the playground and the recess 
activities. For their mutual benefit teachers should 
play with the pupils at recess; otherwise, more moral 
damage may be done in fifteen minutes than good 
teaching can overcome the rest of the day. It is 
an important part of the work of religious education 
to see to it that the atmosphere of the junior high 
school or the grammar grades is kept wholesome and 
frankly Christian. 

4. Broadening Horizons and Awakening Per- 
sonal Ambitions. — The junior high school must ex- 
pand the world of early youth. It must make life seem 
a vastly bigger, grander thing, with deeper back- 
grounds in history and the new-found riches of the 
past, with new meanings discovered in natural science, 
and new perspectives and richer values taught by 
personal friendships and the study of biography. 
With every year now the horizons of life broaden as 
the social instincts of the young find satisfaction in 
learning of the wonderful world beyond the frontier 
of his childish ken. The elementary school grades 
furnish him with the simple tools of learning, the ability 
to read, spell, do simple number work, and express 
his thoughts orally and in writing, besides furnishing 
general information about nature, geography, folk- 



76 Community Forces for Religious Education 

lore, and the world of myth and legend. Now he is 
ready to work with these tools and to dig his way into 
the secrets of life, to add vision to his imagination, 
to join to facile memory the real power to think, 
with growingjudgment and reason. He should find the 
junior high school the house of the interpreter of 
life. Not merely should it prepare him for life; it 
should train him in living. Through elementary 
science it will feed his native curiosity with the inner 
secrets of God's wonder world. Through the gate- 
ways of history, literature, and art he will learn to 
reverence the past as a vast treasure house of the 
riches of the race and will better understand his 
world to-day. Through study of current events, 
elementary civics, and practical sociology he will 
connect the school with life and will find the horizon 
of his life expanding marvelously. 

The more his horizons broaden, the faster his 
world grows, the more it will stir his ambition to meet 
the challenge to make his life count in the world. 
Vocational interests may be aroused by such practical 
courses as manual training, agriculture, household 
arts, stenography, drawing, and other mechanical 
and commerical studies. Personal ambition often 
sleeps through the early teens. It is likely to slumber 
until some dream of power or usefulness challenges 
the boy or girl to strive for something more than the 
ordinary routine of the easy, sheltered life. The 
child leaving school prematurely is never likely to dis- 
cover a worthy ambition. But in ''junior high" they 



Community Forces for Religious Education 77 

will surely see visions. In imagination they will 
see themselves in the role of men and women of 
affairs. They will long to imitate the noble characters 
they admire in fiction, biography, or life until courage 
speaks within them, ''I can and I will." Perhaps 
this response may be due to some personal talent or 
ability for the work in question, though this usually 
is discovered later. That stimulus to ambition which 
fires the soul and gives perseverance to the will 
is the chief thing now. It is a vastly important 
contribution to the moral life in early high school 
years, whatever the special trend the ambition may 
take. It results in redoubling energy, overcoming 
mental laziness, increasing persistance in study, and 
adding a new dignity of self-respect which fits well a 
growing manliness. 

5. New Inspirations and Ideals. — The right kind 
of school for the early teens does not emphasize mere 
instruction and the mastery of facts. Its aim is 
inspiration through contact with the great souls in 
history, literature, music, and art, interpreted by 
life-sharing teachers. Many facts must be mastered; 
but the inner meaning of facts is the real quest of the 
scholar. The adolescent's great study is life, es- 
pecially personal life. His chief interest is often in 
the world of nature, but oftener in the world of 
persons, and he is fascinated by reading of the way 
notable men and women have worked out their 
destinies. An enthusiasm for noble personality aids 
greatly the forming of ideals. The fundamental 



78 Community Forces for Religious Education 

sources of our inspirations — truth, beauty, and good- 
ness, the three great goals of life — are found by the 
youth in many of his courses of study. From lan- 
guages, history, and art he gets flashes of inspiration 
from the noblest cultures of the past, which give 
perspective and largeness to life and destroy 
provincialism. So rich is the high school course in 
broad life interests and inspirations, it is an irrevo- 
cable loss when promising girls and boys are deprived 
of it. 

Ideals are the most important factors in moral 
education. No one's character can rise higher than 
his ideals, which furnish both the ideas for the moral 
judgment and the emotional power for the moral 
impetus of conscience. There is no more important 
task in all the life of adolescence than the selection 
of right ideals. This usually comes to a climax in 
the middle teens, but the process goes steadily on 
through the early teens as well, and should be well 
started in childhood. High school life, with its 
broadening interests and deepening emotions, stimu- 
lates the forming of ideals and makes them in- 
creasingly vital and meaningful. High school work 
and comradeship furnish ample opportunity for the 
expression of ideals, and such expression is needed 
to fix them in character. Ideals are tested in the 
forming of adolescent friendships. The playground, 
with its team-play games, is also fine practice ground 
for ideals , and reveals character unerringly. Conduct 
in the classroom also shows the sort of ethical ideals 



Community Forces for Religious Education 79 

that are guiding behavior. Altruism, one of the 
finest fruits of adolescence, is constantly inspired by 
high school life, as its broadening studies lead the 
student's mind away from himself into the new world 
consciousness and its comradeship with great and 
unselfish minds. With the gradual strengthening of 
conscience, all through these significant years of 
early youth ideals thus acquired become more and 
more dominant and regnant in the growing life. 

6. How the Consolidated School Enriches Rural 
Character, — The social handicap of the unprogressi ve 
rural community is more apparent in its low-grade 
schools than in anything else. These advantages we 
have been describing in the junior high school are 
unknown in such communities. The one-room 
country school, ungraded, poorly taught by an un- 
trained teacher, badly equipped, and irregularly 
attended by a few listless pupils of various ages, is 
the most inefficient institution we have in America. 
The farmers spend very little money on it, and often 
It is not worth its meager cost. For several decades, 
however, this antiquated type of rural school has 
been gradually displaced by the modern consolidated 
school, with its sanitary and convenient building, 
combining all the schools of a township and serving 
as the social center for the community. Wherever 
adopted, the plan has radically changed the type 
of rural community life. It has kept the older boys 
and girls in school and really trained them for country 
life and efficiency on the farm and in the farm home. 



80 Community Forces for Religious Education 

Its broader curriculum and modern equipment have 
broadened the Hfe of the boys and girls just as effec- 
tively as the junior high school has in the towns and 
cities. It has greatly increased their range of life 
interests and thus enriched character. Its equipment 
usually includes library, gymnasium, assembly hall 
for lectures, concerts, dramatics, and socials; labo- 
ratories for science, home economics, agriculture, 
etc.; kitchen, manual training outfit, stereopticon 
or moving-picture machine, school garden, and some- 
times a home for teachers. The advantages of such 
a rural school are particularly valuable for the early 
teens and tend to make the boys and girls contented 
with country life. The chief problem is the serious 
difficulty of finding enough trained teachers capable of 
realizing the vast possibilities, socially and morally 
as well as educationally, in such community schools. 
There is every reason to believe that such modern 
schools, increasing every year, will result In better 
and more efficient rural communities and a finer type 
of country young people. 

7. Teamwork between Church and School. — In 
either city or country, however, it is quite evident that 
there are limits to the influences of the school upon 
character. The public school needs the help of the 
Church and the Church school to supplement its 
work of character building. The Church needs to 
make its work more distinctly educational and 
depend less on fervor and zeal ; and the school needs 
to make its work more earnest in its purpose and really 



Community Forces for Religious Education 8 1 

religious in spirit; and the leaders in both fields need 
to plan together for better community efficiency. 
The last decade has witnessed exactly these tenden- 
cies on the part of both Church and school. In 
many communities they are making honest attempts 
to supplement each other's work. As Church 
school work has become more truly educational, the 
public school in many places has recognized the fact 
and has given academic credit for Bible study. 
Under proper regulation many colleges allow en- 
trance credit for such courses in religion. The 
movement for week-day religious schools in the 
Churches has spread in recent years rather remarkably 
and is destined to become speedily popular as soon 
as the present experimenting yields permanent 
results in approved methods. The serious need for 
such additional instruction in religion is concisely 
stated by Cope in his new book, The School in the 
Modern Church: 

*' Society is not mistaken in devoting about 
twenty-seven hours a week for nine months of each 
year of the growing child's life to his general training. 
Is society right in devoting only one-half of one hour 
each week to his training in the motive and spirit of 
right living? With the whole burden of religious 
training resting on the Churches, since the schools are 
excluded from the work, and families have abandoned 
it, surely we must see the folly of a program of edu- 
cation that gives often fifty times as much time to 
training in the method of making a living as it does 
to the motives of life.'* 



82 Cojnmunity Forces for Religious Education 

In many towns the Daily Vacation Bible School, 
for six or eight weeks in the summer, has proved a 
valuable method with children. Its classes should 
include the early teens. If less stress were placed 
upon play and more on an appropriate study cur- 
riculum, made worth while for boys and girls of this 
age, it would have a stronger appeal to them. 
Whatever the local conditions, it Is evident that the 
educational and religious leaders of a community, 
In city or country, should not neglect to plan to- 
gether for the welfare of their youth In early teens. 
Every city or village should have its community 
council of religious education made up of such 
leaders and other representative citizens. In such a 
council it is possible to plan adequately for the reli- 
gious-educational interests of the community. Then 
school and Church and other community forces can 
be assigned their proper share in the responsibility 
for the character building and training of the grow- 
ing boys and girls and can assist each other in the 
common task. Teamwork will prevent the blunders 
and the losses of both overlooking and overlapping. 

For Investigation and Discussion. 

Find out how many boys and girls In your town 
have left school the past five years after the seventh 
and eighth grades and each high-school year. Have 
you a junior high school in your community? If so, 
what effect did its establishment have on attendance? 
What are the arguments for a junior high school for 
early teens ? 



Community Forces for Religious Education 83 

Find out if the Bible is being used in your schools, 
and, if so, how and with what results. What 
percentage of your seventh- eighth- and ninth-grade 
pupils are Protestants? Would it be right to teach 
religion in such a school? Give your reasons. 

Discover if possible what moral and religious 
influence your junior high school has upon its pupils. 
To what extent is this due to the teachers? What 
pupils have special influence and why? 

Study Draper's claims for the high moral influence 
of American schools; then test these out, in detail, 
in your local school and discover its strength and 
weakness. If you find some bad influence there, 
make plans to eliminate or counteract it. 

What are the chief results of elementary school 
work? In contrast with this, show how school work 
in the early teens ought to broaden mental horizons. 
What should be the broadening effect of nature 
study and elementary science? Show how geog- 
raphy, history, and travel study make the child- 
world expand. 

How many of your boys and girls would you call 
really ambitious? What first ' stimulated their 
ambition? How did school life help? What stimulus 
to ambition may be found in biography? in practical, 
technical, and vocational courses? Is the real 
proof of ambition staying in school or going to work? 

What inspirational values do you find for the boys 
and girls in such cultural studies as literature, history, 
music, and art? How do such courses stimulate new 
life interests and enthusiasms? How does all this 
effect growing character? 

What sources of noble ideals do you find in junior 
high school work? Why is this so vitally important? 
How does school life just now develop altruism? 
What are the concrete results of the consolidated 



84 Community Forces for Religious Education 

school in rural communities? See Chapter XVIII in 
Education for Social Efficiency, King. 

Study Chapter II in Religious Education and 
American Democracy , Athearn, and discuss in class 
the better cooperation needed in your community 
between the school and the Church. 

In The Coming Generation, Forbush, study Part 
III, ^'Betterment through Education/' and note 
the best points for local application. 

In The Modern High School, Johnson, study care- 
fully Chapters XX, XXI, XXIX, and XXX, and 
then decide how much we must depend on our public 
schools as agencies of moral and religious education. 



CHAPTER VI. 
FRIENDSHIP AS A CHARACTER BUILDER. 

1 . The Discovery of New World in Friendship . — 

In our opening chapter we referred to that hunger 
for friendship in the early teens which finds satis- 
faction in a rapidly widening social circle as our boys 
and girls experiment delightfully in living. The 
sudden awakening of the social instincts at this 
period gives new values to life. A new world of 
persons is ready for his friendship if he does his part 
to deserve it. To be sure, he has always had friends, 
but few comrades. In his childish experiments in 
friendship, when selfishness was rampant, he made 
a thoughtless blunder, starting childish quarrels that 
soon were over. Now, in early youth, consciousness 
of kind is stronger. The discovery of common in- 
terests and personal values in other boys and girls 
lays the foundation of many and varied friendships. 
The boys of this age are more gregarious than the 
girls. The latter enjoy their friendships in smaller 
groups; but the former, except in thinly settled 
rural districts, are in leisure hours quite apt to 
herd together in gangs. The boy revels in whole- 
sale friendships. 

There are good gangs as well as bad, depending on 
the leadership and the uniting purposes. Frequently 

(85) 



86 Community Forces for Religious Education 

the gang renders a valuable service in the life of a 
boy. To test his mettle It may handle him a little 
roughly at first; but it saves him from effeminacy, 
fastidiousness, and self-conceit and teaches him many 
a wholesome lesson of real manliness. It stands for 
essential and vigorous democracy in boy life. It 
develops courage, agility, watchfulness, self-reliance, 
and self-respect. In the interest of geiiuineness and 
reality it vigorously assails deceits, shams, and hol- 
low pretensions. It is the terror of the goody- 
goody boy, the young fop, and the mollycoddle, 
until they learn that it takes more than wealth, fine 
clothes, or social polish really to make a man. The 
possible dangers of the gang, when low ideals of 
manliness happen to prevail, are not to be under- 
estimated or ignored; but, rescued by right ideals 
and good leadership, the gang helps in the making of 
of men. Its members will come through this tribal 
stage unscathed, all the stronger and more manly for 
their gang experience, better fitted for teamwork in 
the world of men. Meanwhile the wholesale friend- 
ships in the group life of the early teens furnish an 
outlet for self-expression in every sort of wholesome, 
joyous way as our boys and girls fairly revel in life. 
We shall try in this chapter to discover how their 
friendships develop character. 

2. How Friendship Influences Character. — 
^* Love is the chief source of both character and happi- 
ness,'' says President King, of Oberlin. We shall not 
question that friendship is one of the chief agencies of 



Community Forces for Religious Education 87 

religious education when we remember Kingsley's 
reply to Mrs. Browning's inquiry: ''What is the 
secret of your life? Tell me, that I, too, may make 
mine beautiful." His simple answer was; ''I had a 
friend.'' As one grows older one is more apt to 
realize that friendship is what makes life worth liv- 
ing; that without friends there would be nothing to 
live for. It is particularly true of young folks that 
the stimulus of friendship furnishes life's great 
incentives. Many a boy is kept from discourage- 
ment and failure by the hopes of his friends and their 
stanch faith in him and his future. There is nothing 
like friendship to stir ambition. According to Emer- 
son the greatest thing we can do for our friend Is to 
help him to do what we can. We all wish to live 
up to our friends' high opinion of us and their Ideals 
for our lives. 

. An intimate friend Is like a second self, a sort of 
mirror In which we may see ourselves 

*'As In water face answer eth to face. 
So In the heart man to man," 

we read In the book of Proverbs. Through the eyes 
of our friend we find a new point of view from which 
to look out upon life. His advice and reproof save 
us from many foolish blunders If he is wise enough to 
know ''It Is better to be a nettle In the side of a 
friend than merely his echo." ^ We grow to be like 
our friends just In proportion as we admire them, for 
the result of admiration Is Imitation. This Is espe- 
cially true of our boys and girls in adolescence, for 



88 Community Forces for Religious Education 

they imitate not merely actions, gestures, and other 
externals, like young children, but discover and adopt 
their friend's ideals at the root of all behavior. 
Great is the moral influence of hero worship, which 
admires the object of its vivid attraction, then 
probes for the attractive cause, the inner secret of 
the personal life, and then incarnates in his own life 
the dominant ideals he discovers. Thus sudden 
transformations sometimes occur in character, when 
a wholesome, stimulating friend brings out the latent 
powers of an undeveloped life. It is good to see 
youths in the early teens sharing one another's 
enthusiasms and thus, by contagion of spirit, 
broadening one another's interests and discovering 
undreamed-of possibilities. Thus friendship expands 
life immeasurably. Friendship also offers our boys 
and girls at this age the very real benefits of compe- 
tition and wholesome rivalry. It need not degener- 
ate into envy or jealousy, and it will not if friendship 
is sincere and strong enough to stand the strain. 
Most boys and many girls need such a stimulus to 
activity as a good-natured rivalry furnishes, and 
when friendship thus provides a real moral incentive 
to strive to excel it is surely making character. 

Youthful character, however, is most deeply 
influenced by friendship when it is true and deep 
enough to become mutual self-giving. Only thus is 
the childish habit of selfishness overcome, and the 
life of early youth placed on the higher level of self- 
sacrificing service for a friend. We see the climax 



Community Forces for Religious Education 89 

of youthful friendship when some young Jonathan 
finds his David, and finds in him so congenial a 
confidant that he can say, as that young Hebrew 
prince once said to his shepherd friend : ''Whatsoever 
thy soul desireth, I will even do it for thee" (1 Sam. 
XX. 4). In many a boys' gang such blank checks are 
drawn on the bank of friendship. There is almost 
nothing these close comrades will not do for each 
other. Thus the gang, the mystic group, becomes a 
school of altruism. It is a limited altruism to be 
sure, bounded by the limits of the group. But the 
complement to group selfishness is group altruism, 
and for many a boy this halfway experiment sta- 
tion IS needed to bridge the long stride from childish 
selfishness to manly altruism. 

3. How Bad CoiMpanions Undermine Character. 
— In our praise of friendship as a moral agency in 
youth we must not overlook the fact that its powers 
may work in either of two directions, for good or evil, 
depending on the character of the friendship. The 
same .wonderful power that enables a noble friend- 
ship to beautify and strengthen character also makes 
it possible for the fascinations of a degenerate youth 
to demoralize a susceptible but well-intentioned 
friend. This fact is too well known to require 
emphasis; its psychology lies almost wholly in the 
law of imitation. To risk a friendship with a youth 
of low ideals is simply playing with fire. The chief 
danger lies in the fact that too frequently a super- 
ficial attractiveness goes with low ideals, successfully 



90 Community Forces for Religious Education 

imitating the winsomeness of solid worth. Our boys 
and girls in the early teens are sometimes victimized 
by quasi friends and group leaders a few years older 
who prove to be of this dangerously subtle type. 
The flashy youth dazzles by his easy skill, his conver- 
sational gifts, his talent for ^'putting things over," 
and the sense of mastery often kindled by such native 
qualities of leadership. **What a pity,'' said the 
little girl, ''so many good people are not nice, and 
so many nice people are not good!'' Such aggressive 
personalities, as vivid as they are shady, are more 
readily imitated by susceptible youth than are the 
more passive, colorless characters, who may be thor- 
oughly good but not stirring and alluring enough to 
challenge admiration. There is grave danger both 
in the group leadership and in the personal comrade- 
ship of a single bad character of this flashy type 
among our younger boys and girls. It often takes a 
half dozen of the quieter type to counteract his subtle 
influence; he has so much more vitality, the essence 
of life, that he grips imagination and wins even un- 
willing admiration and imitation, and it is hard to 
break the chains of^his subtle slavery. We have to 
watch such friendship very carefully and break the 
charm before those under the spell of an unworthy 
friend grow to be like him in spite of better judgment 
and nobler ideals. It takes but a single bad comrade 
sometimes to undermine character, but a host of 
helping friends to build it up. 



Community Forces for Religious Education 91 

4. Boy and Girl Friendship in the Early Teens. 

— In later childhood something of sex repulsion is 
often noticed, tending to keep the boys and girls 
apart. They seldom play with each other, each 
looking with genuine disdain upon the other sex. 
The boys hector the girls; the girls resent it and get 
even by superior work in school. Usually the girl of 
twelve is taller and physically superior to the boy of 
the same age; possibly this is the real cause of the 
hectoring! With the dawn of adolescence, however, 
a new sex interest is naturally awakened. The boys, 
maturing a year or more later, soon catch up with 
and pass the girls in height and weight and become 
more interested in them. Sentimental friendships 
just now are seldom either deep or dangerous and 
need not be taken very seriously. Rather let them 
be treated frankly and naturally and, by all means, 
never ridiculed. Sensible friendships, if they do not 
become too absorbing, between girls and boys in the 
early teens are a good thing for both. The tomboy 
spirit still survives in many a vigorious, healthy girl 
of twelve to fourteen summers and will prove a safe 
antidote to sentimentality. Group friendships with 
the boys suit such girls fully as well as ''pairing 
off." They are all good comrades together; and if 
the ideals of the group are kept wholesome, such 
comradeship has a tonic effect on the youth of both 
sexes. , The boys should have their separate social 
life, and the girls theirs ; but it is better for all to have 
good friends of both sexes without too much segre- 



92 Community Forces for Religious Education 

gation. That is the kind of world they will always 
have to live in — a world of both men and women. 
The sooner they get adjusted to it, the better for all 
concerned. 

5. How Varied Friendships Broaden Life. — 
''Birds of a feather flock together/* but it is equally 
true that friends tend to grow like each other. To the 
degree that they think and act alike and have similar 
ideals they grow to resemble each other, not only in 
character, but even in appearance. Friends of long 
years sometimes grow strikingly alike in gesture, 
manner, and expression, even though their features 
are quite different. The stronger the admiration in 
friendship, the more powerful is imitation, conscious 
or unconscious. Persons who have few friends and 
associates are likely to grow narrow because of their 
limited field of imitation. It is quite evident that a 
variety of friendships makes for breadth of character. 
When we have many friends, we are less likely to 
imitate slavishly the characteristics of the friend we 
most admire, but are more certain to select the finer 
qualities of many for the composite of our own 
growing character. It is sometimes quite laughable 
to see sharp resemblances between a young girl and 
her adored teacher or big sister. You will notice not 
only imitation in the externals of dress and the 
favored style of arranging the hair, but also the un- 
conscious affectations of manner, in gait, gesture, 
articulation, pronounciation and characteristic slang! 
The girl becomes the echo and reflection of her 



Community Forces for Religious Education 93 

adoree, just a little imitation of her model. Even 
though the model may be a highly desirable type, 
slavish imitation is not good for a girl. It destroys 
individuality. Broad characters are developed by 
broad interests and varied friendships. Let our 
young people in the early teens become experts in 
sampling life. Let them study the secret of their 
attractiveness of the people they admire and have a 
broad basis of comparison. It will help greatly in 
their important task of selecting right ideals. The 
more and more varied friends they are fortunate 
enough to have, especially if of many types and con- 
ditions of life, the easier it is for them to compare the 
various motives and ideals that find expression in 
varied characters. This is a strong argument for 
supporting the public schools, for in this great 
melting pot of youthful democracy our boys and girls 
are likely to fall in with a great variety of types. 
To be sure, there is danger of evil imitation of un- 
worthy types, but they must learn anyway to depend 
on the inner safeguards; and, under wise guidance 
and the protection of religious ideals and motives, 
the wholesome, normal boy or girl can be safely 
trusted to learn discrimination. A variety of friend- 
ships also saves them from snobbishness and narrow 
sympathies. It teaches them to disregard the ac- 
cidents of birth and wealth and social station in their 
estimates of character, and this is no slight element 
in the education of democracy. 



94 Cofnmunity Forces for Religious Education 

6. The Moral Climax of Friendship. — Friendship 
reaches its dimax, as a- factor in character making, 
when chums with right ideals deeply influence each 
other's life. An intimate friend is a second self. 
Such friendship stimulates self-expression and-, that 
unreserved sharing of confidences which means so 
much in the early teens. Youth needs the fresh 
insights into life, the new interpretations of life 
which close comradeship gives. Speaking of the 
unlimited trust in friendship, Emerson says: **A 
friend is a person with whom I may be sincere; 
before him I may think aloud. *' In such intimate 
comradeship the give and take is most effective when 
each is open-minded and teachable, humble and 
sincere, not envious, suspicious, conceited, or boast- 
ful, but patient with the other's moods and foibles, 
appreciative, sympathetic, charitable, forgiving, never 
begrudging the good fortune of one's friend, and un- 
failingly loyal under all possible circumstances. Many 
of these qualities King, in The Lazvs of Friendship, 
derives from his interpretation of the beatitudes and 
St. Paul's chapter on love. He especially em- 
phasizes the need of persistent desire for our friends 
best development. This ambition for our friend 
gives him the great incentive of another's faith in 
him — the loyalty of one who knows all about him, 
but loves and trusts him just the same. 

7, How Religious Ideals Safeguard Friendship. 
— Religion deepens and enriches friendship, just as it 
ennobles everything else in life; but in a remarkable 



Community Forces for Religious Education 95 

degree friendship Is safeguarded by religious ideals. 
A youth's comradeships are not safe without the 
moral insurance of saving ideals. Such ideals can 
only be found in the realm of religion. Our boys and 
girls need to learn the reality of religion by close 
personal contact with some friend who is Christian 
through and through. Children brought up in a 
home where religion is a stranger, or perhaps a mere 
formality, will take their religion rather lightly, 
especially if their Church school teacher is only 
superficially Christian. They are likely to regard 
religion as simply one of the many electives in the 
curriculum of life. Religious ideals do not mean much 
to them until they see them in the flesh, actually 
lived and wrought into character. As Miss Moxcey 
writes in Girlhood and Character: '^She (the girl) 
must know some one to whom — not to whose mind 
or emotions, but to whose life — religion is the great- 
est value in the world. This makes it a fact of the 
girl's experience to be investigated and honestly 
reckoned with." With such a downright Christian 
for a friend it is easy for our young people to accept 
the ideals of the Christian way as the controlling 
motives of their lives. Thus they are also equipped 
with trustworthy and concrete standards by which to 
judge and select their friendships. When our boy 
thus accepts the ideals of Jesus, we do not worry 
much about the influence of bad companions over 
him, for we feel sure that he will see the unworthi- 
ness of all friendships that cannot stand comparison 



96 Community Forces for Religious Education 

with Christian ideals. In this way his religious 
ideals have become the inner safeguards of his 
friendships and his life. 

For Investigation and Discussion. 

How is friendship different in childhood and in 
youth? Explain what group friendship in a boy's 
gang does for a boy. How can the dangers of the 
gang be avoided? 

Try to describe what friendship has meant to you 
personally. How have your friends stimulated you 
and inspired you to do your best? On what basis 
have you chosen your friends? 

Explain how a new friend sometimes changes a 
boy or girl's character suddenly. Why does a flashy 
youth with low ideals often prove so dangerous? 
How would you try to break the fascination of such 
an evil friend over your boys or girls? 

What is your experience regarding boy and girl 
friendships in the early teens? What is the general 
effect of group friendships of this sort? Explain the 
advantages of having many kinds of friends. Do 
you know cases where friendships have been too 
narrow for true development? Why was this ? What 
is the result in a young girl when she admires one 
person too exclusively? 

As you think over your friendships can you detect 
any lowering influence from a careless friend of rather 
lax ideals? What effect does a half-Christian friend 
have upon a boy or girl? Show how necessary it is 
for growing character to be toned up by friends with 
religious ideals. What can a dead-in-earnest Chris- 
tian accomplish in a single group of average boys or 
girls? 

Discuss in the training class previously prepared 



Community Forces for Religious Education 97 

lists of the qualities of character which help us to 
make the most of and give the most in friendship. 
What is the effect of selfishness in friendship? 

In The Laws of Friendship, King, see how beau- 
tifully he discovers in the beatitudes and in ''Paul's 
sketch of the friendly life'' (1 Cor. xiii.) the true 
qualities of Christian friendship. (See pages 87 to 
114.) 

Study also Hugh Black's little essay, Friendship, as 
a basis of class discussion. Pages 111-161 are very 
suggestive; also the closing chapter on ''The Higher 
Friendship," which shows the effect of friendship 
with Christ upon all Christian friendships. 
7 



CHAPTER VII. 

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS VALUES IN SCOUT- 
ING AND OTHER CLUBS. 

1. The Usefulness of Clubs if or Adolescent 
Training. — Twenty years or more ago shortsighted 
old folks objected to Church clubs for boys and girls; 
but now that debate is about over. Seldom do we hear 
the question raised, '' Why does the religious education 
program include boys' and girls* clubs?" Yet many 
persons who are quite willing the young folks should 
organize do not understand the necessity for it. A 
club is simply organized friendship on the group 
basis. The character values of friendship, discussed 
in our last chapter, need to be developed and con- 
served. . The club method seems to be the best 
means for accomplishing this. In fact, it is the nat- 
ural method that group friendship ordinarily follows. 
The social instinct of most boys and girls prompts 
them to enjoy their social activities in more or less 
closely organized groups. The home does not offer 
them quite this opportunity, not merely because of 
the modern small family, but also because the boys 
and girls tend to organize separately, because 
of their divergent interests. Girls' clubs are seldom 
athletic; boys' clubs of this age are usually so. On 
this point Dr. Hoben says: 
(98) 



Commtmity Forces for Religious Education 99 

"The fact is, the boy gets out of the home anyway 
and seeks his group. There is a process of socializa- 
tion and self-discovery for which the best home 
circle cannot provide, and the club only recognizes 
and uses this *gang instinct/'' 

Wise parents recognize the fact that even the 
protection of home can be overdone. There is a 
limit to the value of home restraints; beyond that 
point they become shackles that prevent develop- 
ment. The boy needs his club as a medium of self-, 
expression, sufficiently free from adult restraints so 
that he can develop his character by unfettered 
activity. He must learn life through his own initia- 
tive. Both school and Church seem to the active 
child *' societies for sitting still." He is taught many 
facts there, but they seem hardly real to him till 
he has a chance to try them out. The club offers a 
variety of expressional activities which supplement 
the curriculum and complete the cycle of education. 
We learned in a former chapter how necessary organ- 
ized play is for youthful development. The club 
offers the best medium not only for organized play, 
but also for practicing the civic and patriotic motives 
emphasized in our next chapter. 

Many men and few women have expressed to the 
writer their great regret that they missed the club 
opportunity in later childhood. This loss is irrevo- 
cable. The youth who misses or bashfully avoids 
this group friendship in the teens is in danger of 
growing into a self-centered life, with social powers 



100 Community Forces for Religious Education 

repressed and undeveloped from sheer lack of whole- 
some stimulus. The adolescent club is valuable 
social practice, and if of the right sort can be made a 
real power in character building. Its disciplinary value 
is sometimes even greater, for a time, than that of the 
home. Many boys of this age, and some girls, are 
more amenable to the public opinion of their club 
than to parents, Church and school combined, be- 
cause their club is a jury of their peers. The gang 
sometimes exercises surprising influence over the 
boy. If he is fresh and conceited or mean and 
cowardly or effeminate, the group has a wonderful 
way of getting it out of him. How true it is of life 
at every stage that the keenest discipline is the 
disapproval of one's peers! At any rate we may as 
well face the fact that most boys and girls will organ- 
ize some sort of club anyway, and a Church is render- 
ing real community service which conducts clubs 
for its boys and girls and thus supervises in whole- 
some ways their group activities. The reward that 
comes to such a Church is the loyalty of the young 
folks who appreciate its devotion to their needs. 
After all, it is easy to win the loyalty of boys and 
girls if you are willing to pay the price in service. 

2. Informal Church Clubs for the Early Teens. 
— An elaborate plan with a complex ritual and costly 
equipment and regalia is not essential to success with 
boys. The only essential is intelligent, devoted 
leadership. Happy the boys who have a pastor who 
has not forgotten his boyhood and likes to keep young 



Community Forces for Religious Education 101 

by living with his boys. Lacking such a minister, 
any young man will succeed as leader of a Church 
boys' club who meets this test of Hoben's: 

''If he finds within himself a deep love for boy^ 
that gets pleasure rather than irritation from their 
obstreperous companionship; if he is endowed with 
kindness that is as firm as adamant in resisting' every 
unfair advantage — which some will surely seek to 
take — if he is noise-proof and furnished with an 
ample fund of humor that is scrupulously clean and 
moderately dignified; if he possesses a quiet, positive 
manner that becomes more quiet and positive in 
intense and stormy situations ; if he is withal teach- 
able, alert, resourceful, and an embodiment of the 
square deal principle; and if he is prepared to set 
aside everything that might interfere with the 
religious observance of every single appointment with 
his boys, then he may considar himself eligible for 
the attempt." 1 , 

Many a Church boys' club has succeeded with a 
simple constitution and an informal plan, elastic in 
purpose and open to frequent changes in line with the 
boy's shifting desires for new activities. In early youth 
the program of the club is frankly recreational — 
that is, it is educational through the medium of 
organized play. Its character aim is, of course, 
Christian manliness, and it will endeavor to put into 
practice the practical ethics taught in the Church 
school; but this will be done in the natural give-and- 
take of games and athletics and other interesting 

i**The Minister and the Boy," page 151. 



102 Community Forces for Religious Education 

group activities which develop personal initiative 
and teamwork and thus constantly test and express 
boy character. Some simple gymnasium apparatus 
will prove useful in the winter, but more important 
is the outdoor life, in all seasons, when the leader 
takes the members of his group hiking or off to a 
favorite playground or rendezvous, perhaps some 
secret nook in the woods, where they occasionally 
keep the tryst together. A week together at a 
summer camp, near lake or river if possible, is an 
annual privilege, long anticipated and remembered 
as the high light of the year and valued by the leader 
as the supreme opportunity to know his boys, to 
win their confidence, and to leave deeply on their 
characters the impress of his Christian devotion. 
Perhaps the best correlation of such a club with the 
Church is to organize it »as the expressional activity 
of the boys in the Intermediate Department of the 
Church school. Its aim should not be merely the 
mutual benefit of the boys. As the group spirit de- 
velops, th6 ideal of service should grow with it, and 
it should be led to express its increasing loyalty 
to Christ and the Church by sharing in such helpful 
cooperation with the local Church's plans as the 
pastor may suggest. 

3. The Organized Appeal to Chivalry. — As the 
boys' club grows in group consciousness it often feels 
the need of a more definite plan, with a closer organiza- 
tion and more picturesque and distinctive motive to 
give greater coherence. A variety of plans, accord- 



Community Forces for Religious Education 103 

ing to the prevailing Interest of the group, await the 
leader's selection. He may pattern his club after 
Indian life, forest rangers, trail seekers, yeomen, 
life-saving crews, able seamen, pilgrims, boys' 
brigade, boys' republic, the boy city, or various other 
motifs — historical, political, athletic, or technical. 
The main thing is to embody a motive which will 
appeal to the boys' interest for the season and find 
a response in some instinct or latent impulse within 
them. A simple ritual expressing the purposes and 
working Ideals of the organization can readily be 
developed. Many such are already available. One 
of the best plans for club work In the early teens is 
the Knights of King Arthur, organized by Forbush a 
quarter of a century ago and still useful because It 
appeals to the spirit of chivalry, which is deep in the 
heart of right-minded boys in the teens. Its founder 
says : 

'*Its purpose is to bring back to the world, and 
especially to its youth, the spirit of chivalry, courtesy, 
deference to womanhood, recognition of the noblesse 
obligCj and Christian daring and ideal of that king- 
dom of knightliness which King Arthur promised he 
would bring back when he returns from Avilon." 

The early t^ens are the chivalry period of boy life, 
especially for boys whose latent imagination has 
been kindled by the noble romances of writers like 
Scott and the poems of the King Arthur legend and 
other literature based o^n the purest motives of the 
feudal period. Loyalty, chivalry, and service are the 



104 Community Forces for Religious Education 

three watchwords of the Knights of King Arthur, and 
these are developed by a variety of interesting activi- 
ties. 

'*The ritual is short but impressive. Its prepara- 
tion and the arranging of the initiations, which 
embody the grades of page, esquire, and knight, give 
room for the constructive instinct in the making of 
regaha, banners, etc. These initiations exercise the 
play instinct without giving opportunity for physical 
violence. Hero worship is developed by a roll of 
noble deeds, the reading together of heroic books, 
and the offering of ranks in the * peerage' and the 
sacred honor of ^the Siege Perilous' for athletic, 
scholarly, or self-sacrificing attainments. * . . . 
Even reduced to its simplicity, the adoption of 
knightly names and ideals, it proves a powerful force 
for uplifting a group of boys by a way that quietly 
and constantly appeals to their idealism and group 
spirit without trespassing upon their reserve or 
making them unduly introspective. "i 

4. CharacterValues in Scouting. — Most promi- 
nent among the character-making clubs for boys for 
the past twelve years has been the Boy Scouts of Amer- 
ica. The purpose of this well-known organization is 
concisely stated in its articles of incorporation: 

^^The particular business and objects of this 
society are to organize all boys ... in the 
United States into units, and to teach them . . 
discipline, patriotism, courage, habits of observation 
and self-control, and the ability to care for themselves 
in all the exigencies of life."i 

i*The Boy Problem." Forbish, page 102. 



Community Forces for Religious Education 105 

These units are called Scout patrols, and the 
members are of three grades, called Tenderfoot, 
Second-Class, and First-Class Scout, the require- 
ments of which are definite practical accomplish- 
ments testing the boys' ability and character. The 
leaders supervising the work of the patrols are called 
Scoutmasters. The practical ideals of the movement 
are so admirable they need no interpretation or 
defense. The twelve points of the Scout law teach 
trustworthiness, loyalty, helpfulness, friendliness, 
courtesy, kindness, obedience, cheerfulness, thrift, 
bravery, cleanliness, and reverence. The Scout 
oath, taken by every member, is a splendid challenge 
to the best in the boy's heart: 

'*0n my honor I will do my best: (1) To do my 
duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout 
law; (2) to help other people at all times; (3) to 
keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and 
morally straight." 

**Be prepared," the suggestive motto of the order, 
stimulates a boy's resourcefulness, self-reliance, and 
readiness for all sorts of emergencies. 

No one acquainted with the Scout movement can 
doubt that it has succeeded in producing a finer 
manliness in hundreds of thousands of American 
boys. In countless practical ways it has made them 
more loyal and helpful citizens in their local cities 
and villages. The plan is not a military one, as it 
was at first in England; but during the war the 
Boy Scouts rendered such fine auxiliary service in 



106 Community Forces for Religious Education 

Liberty Bond drives, food conservation, coast patrol, 
emergency police, etc., as to receive the official 
thanks of Congress and the President. The practical 
activities of the movement, utilizing the vast re- 
sources of outdoor life and appealing strongly to the 
natural interests of boyhood, have skillfully com- 
bined the play spirit with a wholesome return to more 
normal living through the arts of woodcraft, camp- 
craft, seacraft, and varied handicraft. Inculcating 
the temperate, reverent, and helpful life, with the 
doing of some good turn daily with no hope of reward, 
the Scouts have surely raised the ideals of manliness 
among American boys. Though many Scout patrols 
in the past have been organized independently of 
Churches, the strongest surviving patrols to-day, and 
the large majority of them, are connected with reli- 
gious organizations. The plan can be made distinctly 
religious in purpose, though avowedly nonsectarian. 
The Boy Scout Movement Applied by the Church, 
Richardson and Loomis, should be studied by all 
who wish to use this plan in the interests of religious 
education. 

**From the standpoint of moral education," says 
this valuable book, *'it is strategy of the first order 
to place a boy during early and middle adolescence in 
a group that Jias as the foundation of its fellowship 
sincere regard for an oath and law both of which 
are of high moral and religious tone. At this age 
boys are naturally sensitive to the opinions of their 
equals. This social responsiveness makes poignant 
any disgrace or punishment at the hands of the group. 



Community Forces for Religious Education 107 

Thus the social instincts of the boy become, in 
scouting, levers to elevate his moral and religious 
conduct." 

A large majority of Boy Scouts are in early ado- 
lescence, just the period covered by our present 
study. The plan is particularly well adapted to the 
needs of these years. Attention should also be called 
to the fact that this excellent plan has been worked 
into a companion organization for girls of teen age, 
called the Girl Scouts, which utilizes the leading 
principles and motives of the boys' organization, 
adapted appropriately to fit the needs of growing 
girls. It offers broad training, in countless practical 
ways, for the life of American womanhood. 

5. The Gamp Fire Girls in Early Youth. — Charac- 
ter building clubs for girls were organized somewhat 
later than for boys, but in recent years have increased 
rapidly. - For the period of early adolescence, 
possibly the best plan is that o^the Camp Fire Girls. 
Its ideals are unquestionably high, and these ideals 
are expressed through an interesting variety of 
worth-while activities. The three chief aims of the 
society are work, health, and love. These three 
magic words are telescoped into the coined word 
**Wohelo,'* which is used as the watchword of the 
order. Though campcraft is suggested in the name, 
the chief interest of the Camp Fire Girls is in the 
home, of which the household fire is the mystic 
center and symbol. Woodgatherer, Firemaker, and 
Torchbearer are the suggestive names of the three 



108 Community Forces for Religious Education 

degrees of membership, and the law of the camp fire 
is '' to seek beauty, to give service, pursue knowledge, 
be trustworthy, hold on to health, glorify work, and 
be happy/' 

Although the highest grade of this society, that 
of Torchbearer, cannot be entered until a girl is 
fifteen, the girl of twelve is eligible to the first grade 
in the carnp fire, the degree of Woodgatherer. The 
applicant for the degree of Firemaker must be at 
least thirteen and is admitted to the grade after 
qualifying in various practical accomplishments and 
then making this beautiful statement of purpose: 

''As fuel is brought to the fire, so I purpose to 
bring my strength, my ambition, my heart's desire, 
my joy, and my sorrow to the fire of humankind. 
For I will tend, as my fathers have tended, and my 
father's fathers since time began, the fire that is 
called the love of man for man, the love of man for 
God." 

Upon admission to the highest rank, the grade of 
Torchbearer, the candidate states her purpose thus: 
''That light which has been given to me I desire to 
pass undimmed to others.'* 

Thus the simple ritual touches vividly the imagl- 
tive faculty of girlhood and glorifies approaching 
womanhood in these most significant years. The 
high and patriotic purpose of the organization is thus 
beautifully phrased by Dr. Gulick, its founder: 

"To serve their counry and their times by conse- 
crating to it the most precious quality of woman- 



Community Forces for Religious Education 109 

hood ; to bring about more sympathy and love in the 
world; to make daily living more wholesome and 
happy and large; to convert temptation to evil into 
opportunity for righteousness." 

The activities by which the Camp Fire Girls 
accomplish these high purposes are grouped in seven 
departments of work and play and study: homecraft, 
healthcraft, campcraft, handcraft, nature lore, busi- 
ness, and patriotism. In the suggestive Camp Fire 
Handbook may be found several hundred practical 
accomplishments which candidates for promotions 
and honors may undertake, such as making two kinds 
of bread and cake; swimming a hundred yards; 
picking, dressing, and cooking a chicken; sleeping 
out of doors for sixty nights; saving ten per cent of 
one's allowance for six months; raising a crop of 
pop corn ; making a dress, etc. It is self-evident that 
doing such worth-while things as these is exactly the 
way for a growing girl to broaden her interests and 
her character as well as her accomplishments, and 
thus vastly enrich her life. The very concreteness 
of the program and its well-ordered schedule of 
suggested activities are a priceless help to young 
people who are trying to lead successfully a club of 
these younger girls. It furnishes almost unlimited 
material for moral education as well as pure fun for 
teen-age girls. 

6. How the Y. M. C. A. Serves Young Boyhood. 
— The Young Men's Christian Association has for 
about a century been working to help the boys of 



110 Community Forces for Religious Education 

America; but until recently its work has been chiefly 
with the young men and older boys of the larger 
cities. But the so-called community work of the 
association, requiring no special equipment, has 
recently been promoted with distinct success in 
many smaller towns. The community boys' secre- 
tary, when adequately trained and possessing a 
strong, earnest personality, has become an exceeding- 
ly helpful factor in local life and has unfailingly won 
the loyal response of the boys. This *' nonequipment 
work'* in towns and rural communities has proved 
convincingly that an expensively equipped Y. M. 
C. A. building is far less necessary than a devoted 
and versatile personality with an understanding 
sympathy with boys. Such a young man puts the 
stamp of his own virile Christian character upon a 
whole community of boys. They admire him, accept 
his high ideals of manliness and his standards of 
right living. He plans a community program of 
wholesome recreation, supervises their play-life, 
guides their reading, helps them discover vocational 
aptitudes, discusses their intimate life problems with 
them, and trains them in unselfish service and in 
religious motives. Such work has included boys in 
early teens as well as later. Boys of twelve are eligi- 
ble to membership in the Association Boy's De- 
partment. 

The most valuable collection of detailed sugges- 
tions for work with boys in early youth may be 
found in the Handbook for Pioneers and the compan- 



Community Fqrces for Religious Education 111 

ion book for leaders, which contains the ''Christian 
Citizenship Training Program." This is not an 
organization, not a new variety of boys' club; 
it is simply a program to aid the fourfold develop- 
ment of boys, divided into the physical, intellectual, 
and devotional training program and activities, and 
the program for training in service. It was prepared 
by the leaders of association boys' work in the labo- 
ratory of many years' experience. A rich variety of 
suggestions may be found under these four heads 
which will help to develop body, mind, and character, 
and furnish unending life interests. For instance, a 
standardized list of athletic records is furnished, 
graded to fit boys of different size and weight; a list 
of books is given adapted to boys of this period; a 
splendid .variety of group and mass games is de- 
scribed and explained, such as boys in the early 
teens like best to play; instruction is furnished in 
first aid, prevention of accidents, gardening, aquatics, 
nature study, campcraft, and various hobbies; and 
valuable suggestions are offered to help develop the 
boys' religious life and his love of service. This 
program is offered generously by its authors for 
general use, regardless of any connection with the 
Y. M. C. A., and even they who may criticize some 
details of the program will find the book a mine of 
valuable suggestions for boys' club work or even to 
help parents with individual boys. We cannot do 
justice here to the fine sacrificial work many a boys' 
secretary of the Y. M. C. A., is doing for boyhood in 



112 Community Forces for Religious Education 

the early teens. Their work Is usually broadly 
conceived and sympathetically prompted. It aims 
at the complete development of a boy's character, 
including a virile type of modern man's religion, and 
is not intended to be in competition with, but rather 
in cooperation with the work of the Churches and 
the Church schools. 

7. Agricultural Clubs for Country Boys and 
Girls. — Most of the foregoing plans have been found 
useful in both city and rural life, but the special needs 
of farm boys and girls are often better served by clubs 
organized around distinctly rural interests. The 
County Work Department of the Young Men's 
Christian Association was organized a generation ago 
with this idea in mind and has splendidly served the 
social and religious needs of country boys in the 
comparatively few counties where such work has 
been promoted. Valuable extension work has also 
been done by the various State Colleges of Agricul- 
ture with country young people, and this Intro- 
duction to better farm methods, with Its vision of 
modern, progressive Country Hfe has often done 
wonders for them. About a dozen^years ago these 
agricultural schools began to give attention to the 
younger boys and girls upon the farm, and organized 
agricultural clubs of various kinds among them, to 
Interest them as early as possible In the principles of 
better farming. Rural life Is wonderfully rich in re- 
sources and materials of education, and the complex 
technique of farming offers great variety of suggestions 



Community Forces for Religious Education 113 

for dub leaders. Under such supervision and encour- 
agement thousands of corn clubs have been organized 
among both boys and girls, also potato clubs, can- 
ning clubs, debating clubs, market-gardening clubs, 
poultry clubs, pig clubs, baby beef clubs, cook- 
ing clubs, home economics clubs, home school 
garden clubs, etc.; the element of competition 
usually entering in, often with the incentive of 
free trips to Washington or the State capital for the 
successful contestants whose corn, potatoes, or other 
products stood the highest test. Information regard- 
ing this work will be freely furnished upon applica- 
tion to the agricultural education department of your 
State university. The work is distinctly educational 
as well as social and has made better citizens of 
many country boys and girls as well as better and 
happier farmers, more contentedly loyal to country 
life. Country Churches and ministers are wise to 
encourage such plans among their young folks, for 
such activities not only broaden and enrich the 
characters of the boys and girls, but also tend to 
keep them on the farm by checking discontent and 
discovering new interests in the life in the country. 

For Investigation and Discussion. 

List the clubs you find in your community^ for 
boys and girls in early youth. What are their aims, 
plans, and results? Why could not the homes have 
accomplished these results? 

What do you think of the simple plan of informal 
boys' clubs for use by the Church? What can such a 
8 



114 Community Forces for Religious Education 

9 

club do for the growing character of its members? 
Discuss Dr. Hoben's prescription for the leader of 
such a club. 

What is your opinion of the Knights of King 
Arthur plan? Explain its appeal to chivalry in boys 
and why it grips them at this age. Get evidence 
from some one who has used this plan as to its results. 

Explain the aims of the Boy Scouts of America. 
Find out the history of this movement in your 
community. Get some one to explain its successes 
and failures. What strong points are there in the 
Scout law and oath? What fine character-making 
points are there in the Scout plan? Does it work as 
well with girls as with boys? 

Explain the purpose and methods of the Camp 
Fire Girls. Explain the strength of its appeal to 
young girls. What valuable activities does it en- 
courage. How does all this build character and de- 
velop girlhood? 

What is the Young Men's Christian Association 
accomplishing with younger boys? Explain its 
^'nonequipment work" and its fine usefulness. Get 
its Handbook for Pioneers and the accompanying 
Manual for Leaders y and study the '' Christian 
Citizenship Training Program.'' Carefully mark for 
discussion the most useful points in the plan. 

In what ways have agricultural clubs made life 
more worth while for country boys and girls? How 
have these clubs broadened their outlook and helped 
in their character education? Write to your State 
college for a bulletin describing this work in your 
State. 

In The Boy Scout Movement Applied by the Churchy 
Richardson and Loomis, read widely on the general 
plan and study Chapters VII and XVII on ''Steps 



Community Forces for Religious Education 115 

in Character Building" and ''Moral and Religious 
Values in Scouting." 

For an interesting variety of '* things to know and 
do" in girls' club work, get a copy of The Woodcraft 
Manual for Girls, by Earnest Thompson Seton. 
Also read The Sunday School and the Teens, Alex- 
ander, Chapter XXIV, for many interesting ''Aux- 
iliary Teen-Age Organizations." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CIVIC AND PATRIOTIC MOTIVES AS CHAR- 
ACTER BUILDERS. 

1. The Practice of Loyalty a Part of Religion. — 

Our religious education program includes the appeal 
to the civic and patriotic motives, because the prac- 
tice of loyalty is a part of religion. In fact, in its 
broadest sense, loyalty, as faithfulness in all personal 
relations, is the whole of religion. The commonest 
use of the term ''loyalty,'' however, refers to patriot- 
ism, and this has always been an important phase of 
religion. Some nations have even tried to make pa- 
triotism the whole of religion. Or, rather, a substitute 
for it. Great leaders like Moses, Cromwell, 
Washington, and the prophet Isaiah have 
wisely made the patriotic and religious sentiments 
reenforce each other. This makes a most powerful 
appeal and results in strong character. A rightly 
interpreted patriotism makes an especially strong 
appeal to boys and girls, for the spirit of loyal- 
ty is at high tide in adolescence. We should 
encourage every true expression of their patriotic 
enthusiasm, for it has a deepening effect upon grow- 
ing character. The most permanent moral effect, 
however, is produced not by cheers for the flag or 
by glorifying our national history, but by practicing 
(116) 

) 



Community Forces for Religious Education 117 

loyalty itself in our own good citizenship. The 
practice of loyalty, then, is our chief consideration in 
this chapter, and particularly its demands upon our 
younger boys and girls. 

2. The American Public School and Patriotism. 
— The United States has a population more mixed than 
that of any other country on earth. Many of our 
cities are more foreign than American. In many of 
them more than sixty per cent of the people are of 
foreign birth or alien parentage. To weld together 
such a conglomerate population into a patriotic 
nation, loyal to a common flag. Constitution, laws, 
customs, and ideals, is an exceedingly difficult task. 
The difficulty is increased by the variety of languages 
spoken, and also by the fact that hosts of immigrants 
enter every year for the main purpose of selfish 
economic gain and wholly ignorant of American 
ideals. Yet experience has proved that a majority 
of these new Americans become good citizens, and 
their children, with surprising swiftness, catch the 
spirit of the new homeland and become some of 
its most loyal citizens. For this miracle of trans- 
formation we must mainly thank the American 
public school. 

For the past forty years special attention has 
been paid to this important problem by our 
public schools, and the teachers have done a 
conspicious service in training the children to be 
loyal to the country and the flag. It is a rare school 
and a poor one that does not possess its own flag, 



118 Community Forces for Religious Education 

and frequently the pupils are accustomed to salute 
it and renew their pledge of allegiance: '*I pledge 
allegiance to my flag, and to the republic for which 
it stands; one nation, indivisible, with liberty and 
justice for all." The study of American history is 
thoroughly taught in the junior high schools, and 
with it the fundamental ideals and principles that were 
in the minds of the founders and that remain as the 
priceless heritage of the nation. The leading heroes, 
both civil and military, whose service has made the 
nation great, often become familiar friends to these 
youths in early teens. The schools are more and 
more stressing the patriotic holidays and introducing 
special features and appropriate addresses by leading 
citizens. Especially in wartime the great issues of 
patriotic citizenship were constantly kept before 
the pupils. What is needed now is to stimulate a 
peace-time loyalty, interpreted in terms of national 
service and true national honor. This should mean 
no narrow nationalism, no cheap *^ America first," 
which ignores the world's need and seeks selfish 
isolation and lonesome prosperity, but that broad- 
minded patriotism which seeks national power for 
human service everywhere, in the spirit of President 
Wilson's remarkable words: *'Here is the nation 
God builded by our hands. What shall we do with 
it? Who is there who does not stand ready at all 
times to act in her behalf in a spirit of devoted and 
disinterested patriotism? We are yet in the youth 
and the first consciousness of our power. The day of 



Community Forces for Religious Education 119 

our country's life is still but in its fresh morning. 
Let us lift up our eyes to the great tracts of life yet 
to be conquered in the interest of righteous peace. 
Come, let us renew our allegiance to America, con- 
serve her strength in its purity, make her chief 
among those who serve mankind; self-reverent, 
self-commanding, mistress of all forces of quiet 
counsel, strong above all others in good will and the 
might of invincible justice and right." 

It is a great thing for the public schools to teach 
our boys and girls their country's history and ideals, 
the high character of its leaders, the position of honor 
it has won in the world by its human service and 
true greatness, as well as the various ways the govern- 
ment serves and protects its citizens. The better 
they understand these facts, the more surely they 
will realize the high privilege of American citizenship, 
and the more certain they will be to honor their 
country in their own lives. 

3. The Bible and Good Citizenship. — It is well 
for our boys and girls to know that the supreme 
motives for good citizenship come from the Bible. 
They are found in the teachings of Jesus and the 
Old Testament prophets. Jesus gives us many a 
picture of the ideal State, a fraternal world of friendly 
workmen, which he liked to call the kingdom of God. 
When we call the gospel of Jesus a ''social gospel " we 
simply mean that it aims to redeem men in business, 
in politics, and in all other human relations as well 
as in their attitude toward God. Though the 



120 Community Forces for Religious Education 

Church too frequently neglected this practical 
human side, it is clear to rpodern Christians that 
Jesus intended his religion, the Christian way of 
living, to be carried into politics and all social re- 
lations. This is not the priest's idea of religion, but 
it is the true test of religion and has been ever since 
Amos, the first of the ancient prophets whose ser- 
mons have come down to us, took for his flaming 
text, **Let justice roll down as waters, and righteous- 
ness as a mighty stream/' 

Social justice must be the unflinching aim of 
religion. It is the point where religion and politics 
must meet, though too often they are wide apart. 
Our boys and girls in junior high school are not too 
young to be taught that the Christian citizen must 
help to develop a State that guarantees a square deal 
for all classes of men, with equal opportunity before 
the law and special privilege for none, with even- 
handed justice in the courts securing the inalienable 
rights of American citizenship to, all. This is Chris- 
tian democracy. It must be maintained at all costs. 
Away back in Leviticus we read the prophetic 
challenge to the world: ''Proclaim liberty through- 
out the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.** 
Social justice is the splendid Hebrew and Christian 
ideal. No country in history has ever perfectly 
realized it, but this is the aim of the democracy of 
God, and our young citizens in their teens should 
learn the dignity and beauty of this ideal of Jesus 



Community Forces for Religious Education 121 

and the prophets which is surely winning its way 
among the nations. 

4. What Is a Good Citizen ? — If learning the prac- 
tice of loyalty is a part of religious education, our 
boys and girls must get correct ideals of good citizen- 
ship. The most prominent citizen is not necessarily 
the good citizen. The shortstop who plays to the 
grandstand is probably not the best ball player. 
Bad politics thrives on bad citizens or negligent 
citizens. We must learn to recognize a good 
citizen when we see one. He is intelligent in civic 
matters as well as in business; he is unselfish in 
community interests as well as in his family; he is 
loyal to his country in time of peace as well as war; 
he is as anxious for his neighbors' rights as for his own ; 
and he is more anxious to fulfill his civic duties than 
to get his rights. In short, the good citizen is the 
Christian in civic life, a faithful champion of social 
justice and democracy. 

It is an interesting fact that only high school 
graduates can vote in China. Yet in America we 
have millions of ignorant voters, many of whom can- 
not read or write. Our future voters must have 
civic intelligence as well as ordinary education, or 
the democracy that depends on them will not be safe. 
The good citizen knows his country's history and 
ideals, its constitution and fundamental laws, its 
process of government and how its business is con- 
ducted. The good citizen is unselfish in his citizen- 
ship; that is, he does not let private affairs interfere 



122 Community Forces for Religious Education 

with his civic duty any more than he allows his 
religion or his business to interfere with his duty to 
his family. His personal business interests do not 
prevent his taking his share in public affairs when he 
is needed. He never shirks his just taxes. He 
realizes his country needs his loyalty in peace as well 
as in war. He accepts his burdens of taxation and 
civil service as cheerfully as he would accept military 
service in wartime emergency. He learns early the 
duty of cooperating with his neighbors for the welfare 
of his community, regarding the people of his neigh- 
borhood as just a larger family. This our young 
citizens should learn in adolescence, loyally accepting 
the tasks they are qualified to do to make their town 
or village a better place to live in. Their community 
and country will suffer unless young folks, as well as 
adults, learn that citizenship involves duties as well 
as rights and privileges. 

5. Boys and Girls in Community Service.— 
Genuine patriotism begins at home. False patriotism 
is most enthusiastic with the square of the distance! 
Our great leaders, who were given a chance to serve 
their country conspiciously, usually began in early 
life by serving their community humbly and unsel- 
fishly. Even after retiring from the White House 
President John Quincy Adams accepted the civic 
duty of selectman of the small town of Quincy, his 
Massachusetts home. One of the acid tests of 
patriotism is the test of community service. The 
good citizen practices loyalty in his home community; 



Community Forces for Religious Education 123 

that is, he is anxious to do all he personally can to 
build up a better community, for only thus can any- 
one build a better country. In many places the 
community spirit is at low ebb. There is very little 
local pride. The grown-ups are selfish or asleep. 
Every one leaves who can get away. The affairs of 
the village are badly managed because of neglect, 
and no one seems to care. In such decadent com- 
munities an alert, intelligent group of boys and girls, 
with clear vision and wise leadership could do much 
to improve matters. 

The practice of loyalty for this group in the early 
teens would naturally begin with the determination 
to make the community more healthful, sanitary, 
and attractive. They would plan a community 
clean-up day, beginning with their high school 
grounds and their own homes. Such a plan could 
be made as sociable as a picnic, and, if thoroughly 
planned, surprising results could be obtained. All 
litter and refuse would be banished rigidly, and the 
younger children would, be taught to quit the litter 
habit. The simple ideal would rapidly spread that 
one who tears and scatters paper or other rubbish is 
no friend of ^* spotless town.'' This determination to 
achieve a clean community, both preached and prac- 
ticed by these energetic boys and girls in all possible 
ways, would rapidly make the movement popular. 
Even the old folks would catch the spirit of it. One 
sure symptom of poor citizenship is the poor condi- 
tion of public buildings. It may take a year to 



124 Community Forces for Religious Education 

convert the town fathers to the gospel of fresh paint. 
Meantime, while agitating for paint and repairs, 
give the lawns a surprise with the mower and do some 
inexpensive planting of trees and shrubs that will 
transform the school desert into something of a park. 
If similar care is given to the homes of the boys and 
girls, as well as their churches and other public 
buildings, former* residents will hardly know the 
place when they come back for old-home week in 
the fall. 

The older yoiing people could accomplish many 
things our boys and girls would hardly wish to start, 
but these latter could help in many a good movement, 
such as teaching first aid, fire protection, sanitary 
home customs, hygienic living, developing social and 
recreative centers, such as a public playground, 
bathing beach, community houses, or reading room 
or rest room, and promoting a wholesome social life 
through concerts, dramatics, lectures, picnics, ath- 
letic meets, community carnivals, etc. It is a well- 
tested fact that even an unpopular, decadent com- 
munity can, by such interesting social cooperation, 
grow into a homelike, popular place of residence with 
a justifiable pride in its progressiveness. Boys 
and girls who had a share in this welfare 
work for community betterment have had a lesson 
in good citizenship which they well never forget. It 
will vitalize their study of civics in high school and 
will help to fit them for intelligent, unselfish partici- 
pation in political life, when, at twenty-one, they 



Community Forces for Religious Education 125 

attain the full dignity of citizenship with the right to 
vote. 

6. Patriotic Holidays and Community Pag- 
eants. — The United States has a remarkably interest- 
ing and useful set of national holidays. From an ed- 
ucational standpoint these are really a great asset. We 
cannot celebrate the King's birthday except on Christ- 
mas ; but the ''bank holidays " of Great Britain, utter- 
ly devoid of sentiment, are a poor substitute for our 
significant Memorial Day, Independence Day, Wash- 
ington's and Lincoln's birthdays, Columbus Day, 
Arbor, Labor, and Thanksgiving Days, each with its 
own distinctive motive and its challenge to patriotic 
devotion and Its teaching of high national ideals. 
Dr. Hoben advises the Churches to ''plan definitely to 
capture these opportunities for the community's 
good." The Church year, to be sure, offers Its own 
periodic lessons with each passing season, but the 
program Is splendidly broadened and enriched by 
utilizing these patriotic holidays. Let them be made 
genuine red-letter days, not merely on the enter- 
prising coal dealer's calendar, but in the community 
program of religious education, where they can do the 
most good. They furnish just the variety needed for 
Church school programs and can frequently be 
made the connecting link between the Sunday ses- 
sions and the social activities of the week. They are 
all worth observing with special plans, with musical, 
dramatic, and tableau features appropriate to the 
day. The boys and girls will gladly welcome a chance 



126 Community Forces for Religious Education 

to serve on such programs and to learn new lessons 
of patriotism as they thus cooperate. 

In the older parts of the land the pleasant custom 
has been recently growing of observing founders' day, 
or old-home day, or, occasionally, on some national 
holiday, with original adaptations of the pageantry 
method, reproducing famous historical scenes of 
local or State history. It is good strategy to 
develop such local interests. Every section of the 
land has its own wealth of heroic biography and 
significant events. It requires no local historical 
society to discover, idealize, and dramatize, often 
with striking effectiveness, this heroic past. It is 
always a great stimulus to patriotism. Thus, each 
generation can bridge the past and make it live again, 
and the boys and girls fortunate enough to partici- 
pate can enter again into the struggles and hardships 
of pilgrims and pioneers who built their lives into 
the very foundations of the nation and thus, through 
the power of the dramatic instinct, they can be 
brought to appreciate the value of their heritage as 
American citizens and what it all cost in humaii 
sacrifice. 

7. Loyalty in the Country Community — The 
practice of loyalty in rural life involves a double duty 
— loyalty to the State and nation, and loyalty to 
country life itself. The latter is often more seriously 
needed than the former. It is often easier to be 
loyal to the government at Washington than to life 
in Medway! Yet the hope of the country depends 



Community Forces for Religious Education 127 

upon the contentment and loyal efficiency of citizens 
of Medway and their like. Usually where there is 
good soil, we find a fairly progressive rural life; but 
progress is more rapid when the young folks are 
loyal to country life and are helping to make their 
community worth living in as a permanent home. 
Since the end of the inflated prosperity that followed 
the war, with abnormal wages in the cities, there has 
been a drift back to the country and more content- 
ment there. A real reconstruction has seen going 
on lately in our prosperous farming communities. 
Better farm machinery tends to abolish drudgery, 
and automobiles and telephones to relieve isolation. 
As the first step in practicing loyalty boys and 
girls living in the country should be led to appre- 
ciate their opportunities. The next step is to dis- 
cover what their community needs to bring it up to 
front-rank standard of happiness and efficiency. 
Patriotic boys and girls in country homes will share 
in the improved art of homemaking and in the team- 
work that the farm homestead requires. They 
will help to bring their local schools up to a 
more effective standard and will aid their teachers in 
their broader service for the community. Most of 
the suggestions in the earlier part of this chapter 
apply to rural life as well as to the city; but the local 
problem is often more acute in the country, and the 
patriotic boys and girls there will find many ways to 
cooperate with the older leaders who are striving to 
develop better schools, homes, and churches, better 



128 Community Forces for Religious Education 

farming, better recreation, and better local govern- 
ment. 

After all, the fundamental ideal in rural patriotism 
is a sacred regard for the soil itself, on which all our 
prosperity primarily depends. The ancient Hebrews 
first taught the gospel of the holy land. They re- 
garded the very soil as sacred. They used extreme 
means to keep within the family the ownership of 
the ancestral acres. No farm boy is really patriotic 
unless he has learned to be good to the soil, not to 
drain its fertility, but to rotate crops and fertilize 
faithfully to conserve fertility. The nation's future 
prosperity depends in large measure on the conscien- 
tious resolve of the farmer to pass on his farm to his 
son or future purchaser, not depleted in fertility, 
as much American soil has already become through 
abuse and neglect, but richer than ever in those 
chemical properties which are resources for future 
bumper crops. Such patriotic motives as this will 
help our country young folks to develop nobler 
character by the everyday practice of rural life at its 
best. For additional suggestions on this very prac- 
tical topic the reader is referred to the fifth chapter in 
The Church School of Citizenship, Hoben, and to 
Community Civics, Field and Nearing, a textbook 
prepared especially for boys and girls in country 
schools. 

For Investigation and Discussion. 
Do you think patriotism has anything to do with 
religion? Why? What would the prophet Isaiah 



Community Forces for Religious Education 129 

say about this? What is the effect of the practice of 
loyalty upon a boy's character? 

Discover how your local schools have been teach- 
ing patriotism the past year. Why is this especially 
needed in America? What studies in junior high 
school help most on this? What does the slogan 
** America first" mean? How far should our patriot- 
ism reach? 

What motives for good citizenship do you find in 
the Bible? Show that social justice is the point 
where religion and politics must meet. What is 
Christian democracy, and where do you find its 
origin in the Bible? 

Who in your community best illustrates your ideal 
of a good citizen? Discuss the various elements need- 
ed in the good citizen to-day. Find the weak spots 
in your town government and who is responsible for 
them. 

Discuss plans for teaching your boys and girls that 
patriotism should begin at home. List the kinds of 
community service they might render in their 
practice of citizenship. How can they make the 
town cleaner, more attractive, better kept up, safer, 
and more sanitary? What effect will such work have 
upon their own loyalty to the old home town? 

Plan a year's program for the better observance of 
all the patriotic holidays by the boys and girls of 
your community. Fit these into the Church year and 
show how the Church may play its full part in making 
them red-letter days for everybody. 

Set your boys and girls studying local history. 
Find out who the founders were and all about them. 
Fix the date of founders' day and plan a program to 
celebrate, with appropriate pageantry. Get sug- 
gestions from Historical Plays for Children, Bird and 
Q 



130 Community Forces for Religious Education 

Sterling, and articles on pageantry in back numbers 
of the magazine, Playground. 

If you live in the country discuss a practical 
program to make your community more popular, 
and deservedly so, especially with young folks. Plan 
a lesson for your boys and girls in rural patriotism, 
beginning with better farm ideals and a sacred 
regard for the soil. 

Study the way Dr. Hardy has presented American 
ideals in his textbook for new Americans, A Manual 
of American Citizenship, Plan to use this some 
month in the summer with your class in the Church 
school. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE CHURCH SCHOOL'S OPPORTUNITY IN 
THE EARLY TEENS. 

1. To Gratify Their Adolescent Passion for Life 
and Reality. — These newcomers from the world of 
childhood have an enthusiasm for life which is good 
to see. As they stand on the threshold of manhood or 
womanhood, it is fascinating to see their eagerness. 
With hungry senses, alert minds, and vigorous 
bodies they have an insatiable appetite for expe- 
rience. They want to live, and live largely. The 
uprush of the forces of life within them demands 
chance for expression and growth. In the previous 
chapters we have seen how the various social agen- 
cies of our modern life meet these eager boys and 
girls and contribute to their development. All these 
factors in the life of early youth are meeting real 
needs and expanding their world; but there are other 
needs still unmet, there are religious cravings these 
social agencies cannot satisfy. This passion for real 
life is itself a spiritual desire, a deep soul hunger that 
religion alone can meet. 

We are now asking ourselves what the religious 
agencies of the community can do for these young 
folks. They have come to a real danger point in 
their development. It is the danger of losing the 

(131) 



132 Community Forces for Religious Education 

best in life by choosing the lesser good. The quest 
of happiness for its own sake is like following the 
will-o'-the-wisp. Wealth, fame, honor, social stand- 
ing, are equally deceptive goals. Thousands of these 
boys and girls have started on these false trails. 
They have not yet been taught the spiritual meaning 
of life. Religious teachers must show them the inner 
unity of all life and its eternal values. At the heart 
of life they must be led to find God, the source of all 
the goodness, truth, and beauty they so much ad- 
mire. Let them come to feel the reality of the 
invisible world, the life of immortal spirits, and life 
takes on suddenly the depths and heights, the per- 
spective and expansion, which their unfolding natures 
crave. To a certain limited extent the day school 
teacher can lead them along this pathway to light, 
but it remains for the teacher of religion, in the 
Intermediate Department of the Church school, 
fully to meet this high challenge and to teach them 
the meaning of life in its three dimensions — self- 
development, unselfish service, and its upreach to 
God. Many a humble Sunday school teacher, with 
spiritual vision and a great love of youth, is giving 
our boys and girls this high sense of the dignity and 
reality of life, which is the climax of education. 

2. To Equip Them with a Living Bible, a Book 
of Life. — The child's Bible is a book of wonders. The 
portions of the Bible which he likes best are the 
marvelous stories of strange events, which appeal to 
his unbridled imagination and fit in beautifully with 



Community Forces for Religious Education 133 

the world of his childish fancy. As he grows older, 
too frequently the Bible becomes for him merely a 
book of the past, perhaps an impossible narrative of 
improbable stories and dead issues, with very little 
connection witb present living or ordinary people. 
The Bible will slip from the fingers of the youth in 
the early teens unless we can bring it up to date for 
him and show him that it is part and parcel with the 
life he loves. He will not worship a dead book, even 
though written by angels; but a book of life, throb- 
bing with the human struggles of heroic men and 
women, will grip him, heart and soul. By discovering 
Palestine on the map, right at the world's solar 
plexus, between three great continents, he must get 
the Holy Land out of the airplane zone into the 
world of reality. Biblical geography, mastered in 
early teens, will help to make the Bible real. It will 
locate Scripture events and anchor them to real 
history. 

The modern historical interpretation of the Bible 
makes It a living book. It breaks the binding, to be 
sure, and thus separates the sixty-six books of the 
Scriptures to be studied and judged each on its 
own merits. But the binding was of human manu- 
facture purely and riveted on very late in history. 
We must not let the human binding shackle the 
divine messages. Let the boy in his teens untie 
Amos from Leviticus and the Song of Solomon, and 
Amos Is given his freedom. He takes his majestic 
place in life. Our boy learns that this fearless, 



134 Community Forces for Religious Education 

obstreperous prophet was more than a literary, 
bloodless voice; he was a man. He really lived, 
around 760 B.C., fought his noble fight, made ene- 
mies, feared neither priest nor king, and surely started 
some things by daring to speak out boldly what God 
had taught him was right. Thus must the Church 
school introduce the youth to the vital, pulsating lives 
of all the prophets and apostles. He must get acquaint- 
ed with the human struggles and ambitions, as well as 
their Inspired messages. Thus we shall rescue him 
from mechanical theories about the Bible, which make 
it a dead book from a dead past. His Bible will be- 
come a living book. He will find the life of God and 
men there, and God's method with men whose lives 
are open to his powerful Spirit. The Church school 
that thus equips its intermediate pupils with a Bible 
that IS a book of life goes far in meeting its oppor- 
tunity in the strategic day of early youth. 

3. To Bring Them Face to Face with Jesus 
Christ. — To be sure, they have known of Jesus ever 
since they can remember. In the Primary Depart- 
ment they were taught about his wonderful birth and 
godlike life; in the Junior Department they followed 
his majestic steps, but these steps hardly seem to 
touch the ground. He seemed more God than man. 
Now, in the early teens, they need to find the man 
Christ Jesus. In vivid imagination they need to sit 
down with him by the well in Samaria, look into his 
level eyes, and, even better, work by his side at the 
bench in Nazareth and see on his hands the callous 



Community Forces for Religious Education 135 

places and maybe the scars of labor. They need to 
come face to face with the Carpenter of Nazareth and 
the Fisherman of Capernaum and the Teacher in 
. the Jerusalem temple. They need to walk with 
him along the bypaths by the Jordan and up to 
Csesarea and the frontier of Phoenicia; and sail 
with him on Galilee by moonlight, and to camp 
with him on the plains of Perea, and mountain 
climbifig with him up the adventurous Jericho road, 
haunted by brigands. They need to make with 
Jesus that first thrilling visit to the city, when his 
expanding adolescent soul caught fire with its experi- 
ence of God. They need to see visions with Jesus, 
visions of kindly helpfulness, of sympathetic service, 
of unflinching devotion to duty, of fearless attack 
upon graft with whip and lashing tongue, visions of 
victorious debates with adroit enemies, of precious 
companionship with congenial friends, and the all- 
inclusive, reassuring vision of the kingdom of heaven 
and a world redeemed. They need to know Jesus 
in his young manhood, in his struggle with poverty, 
in his labor for the support of a large family of 
younger brothers and sisters and a mother beloved, 
in his career of teaching and public service. They 
need to struggle with him through those very natural 
temptations in the wilderness, his strivings against 
appetite, the desire for fame and power, and the lure 
of every lesser good. They need to feel the reality 
and simplicity of Jesus's own religion, to see how 
much God meant to him and how near he always 



136 Community Forces for Religious Educaiton 

was; to see how his trust in his Father kept him 
serene and untroubled, and how wonderfully his 
life with God brought power into his life and made 
him a superman. They need to learn to pray with 
Jesus, to be on speaking terms with his Father and 
theirs, that they, too, may become supermen and live 
lives of usefulness and power. We should never fear 
lest familiarity with the young man Christ Jesus, 
through such a face-to-face study of his intimSte life, 
might lose for our youth the glory of his divinity. 
It will tear away the filmy veil which made his 
features indistinct, unreal, puzzlingly obscure, and 
vaguely divine; but they will see a new godlikeness 
in the face of Jesus, as the divineness of his perfect 
character shines through" when they get near 
enough to share his human experiences and know him 
as a living, breathing friend. Unless the intermediate 
teacher has succeeded in accomplishing this for our 
youth in the early teens , he had better try again or give 
someone else this splendid opportunity; for the com- 
rade Christ is there, waiting to step fprth from the 
gospel lessons into the waiting life of our boys and 
our girls. They need to meet him fact to face, to 
accept his unlimited friendship, and to give him 
their life's loyalty in return. Thus he will become 
their Saviour, their only Master, their Redeemer 
from a life of sin and failure, the Inspirer of all their 
youthful visions and ambitions. Nothing is more 
important than our devoted efforts for the conver- 
sion of these boys and girls; but we shall need to 



Community Forces for Religious Education 137 

elaborate programs of evangelism if consecrated and 
skillful teachers reveal the real Jesus to them. 

4. To Acquaint Them with the World's Best 
Typesof Heroic Living.— It is perfectly clear to all 
friends of early adolescent youth that this is the hero- 
worship period of human life. Right now is the 
time of maximum response to the heroic example of 
truly noble lives. It is fine strategy, therefore, to 
pack our curriculum for these years full of the world's 
best illustrations of heroic living. Let us follow our 
lessons in the Christ life with stories of those who 
have most closely followed the heroic Man of Galilee. 
Such lessons, by firing vivid imagination with day- 
dreaming and starting forthwith the vital process of 
enthusiastic imitation, make most effective appeal to 
latent youthful heroism. 

Selection must be made judiciously, but the Old 
Testament yields some splendid types of heroic 
living, such as Joseph, Moses, Elijah, Daniel, 
Jonathan, and David; yet the human flaws of even 
this last favorite must be frankly acknowledged, 
and the mistake must be avoided of trying to thrust 
sainthood upon such unhallowed characters as the 
shifty Jacob and the very foolish Solomon. In the 
New Testament we find splendid material in the 
lives of Paul and his comrades of the early Church in 
the Roman world. We discover a most useful 
contrast in the lives of the earlier apostles, especially 
Peter and John, who were shrinking cowards before 



138 Community Forces for Religious Education 

the resurrection but men of dauntless courage ever 
after. 

Objection used to be made in some quarters 
against using ''extra-Biblical material" in Sunday 
school teaching. The Church school is not simply 
a Bible school; it is a school of religion and a school 
of character. It must primarily, but not exclusively, 
teach the Bible as the source of Christian teaching 
and ideals. There are wonderful teaching values in 
Christian history and literature since Bible days, and 
these are too valuable to lose. Moreover, these 
values help to link the Bible scenes and heroes to 
real life if we follow them with the best types of 
heroism the Bible itself has inspired. They help to 
teach the method of heroic living and encourage 
imitation by ordinary boys and girls to-day. Savon- 
arola, Cromwell, Wilberforce, Howard, and Chinese 
Gordon are names to conjure with among hero- 
worshipping boys; and Florence Nightingale, Joan of 
Arc, Bona Lombardi, Virginia Dare, and ^Queen 
Philippa have won similar admiration from countless 
girls. The annals of missionary heroism, in the 
present as well as the past, furnish splendid material 
for such teaching. Livingstone, Carey, Judson, 
Horace Pitkin, Mary Morrill, and Walter R. Lambuth 
each has a life story worthy of our use in this connec- 
tion and sure to leave indelible impression upon the 
mind of youth. To these more familiar names it is 
well to add others more obscure and less familiar, 
whose noble deeds prove them worthy of a place 



Community Forces for Religious Education 139 

among Christian heroes; and fortunate the commu- 
nity that can add one of its own citizens to such an 
honored Hst. The nearer the personal life and ex- 
perience of the boys and girls, the more powerful 
the moral impression the illustration makes, pro- 
vided it is an unquestionably worthy one. It proves 
that heroism is not all in the past, but the roll of 
Christian heroes is still in the making. 

5. To Challenge Their Latent Heroism with the 
Heroic Appeal. — The study of heroic lives is itself a 
silent challenge to the latent heroism of youth. It is 
hardly possible to overdo such a challenge. Pile in 
the illustrations. Lengthen your roll of well-deserved 
fame. The longer it grows, the more evident It will 
become that the world is full of heroism and noble 
living. You can never cheapen heroism by making 
it popular and democratic. Build up the gold 
reserve and inflate the circulation of this precious 
standard of exchange, and you bring down the value of 
gold and inflate prices. Gold can thus be cheapened ; 
but heroism never, for it is not transferable. No one 
can steal or be given another man's heroism. It 
can be imitated, but never e:5|changed. 

We should follow up our teaching of the gospel 
of heroism by definite appeals to heroic living. With 
the more reponsive youth this may not be necessary. 
They will feel so keenly the moral impulsion of heroic 
example that this will prove a sufficient stimulus to 
their own noble impulses, and they will watch for 
opportunities to express them in heroic deeds. But 



140 Community Forces for Religious Education 

others will need concrete suggestion and special 
stimulus. Some, with defective imagination, may 
quite naively cheer the heroism of Livingstone but 
feel no personal sense of duty to run the risk of thin 
ice to pull a little colored lad out of the dark waters 
of the slimy Frog Pond. At this point the program 
of the Boy Scouts of America has helped wonderfully 
by its demand for the good turn daily. Thousands of 
boys cultivate the mental attitude that is ready and 
set for any heroic action that emergency suggests. 
It gets to be a part of their philosophy of life to wel- 
come such opportunities gladly and to do them 
modestly, with no hope of reward. Most boys and 
girls have some latent heroism; but they need to 
have it nudged and prompted. Too many of them 
are related to lazy and selfish parents and take rather 
naturally to the easy life. It is a broad way, and 
'^ many there be that find it.'' Appeal to such youths 
with the challenge of the difficult. Do not insult 
their early-teens idealism by an easy appeal. You 
cannot hold their respect and do this. They are old 
enough to know that worth-while life is strenuous. 

That wise and successful worker with boys, E. 
M. Robinson, gives us this keen testimony from his 
thirty years' experience: 

'*God has made it easy to reach boys in their 
early adolescent years if a hard enough program is 
placed before them. Boys do not like to do easy 
things. There is no fun jumping over a two-foot 
ditch. Boys like to do hard things. God himself 



Community Forces for Religious Education 141 

cannot make a strong man out of a boy except as he 
gets him to do hard things ; nor can he make a noble 
man out of a boy except as he gets him to do noble 
things. To shield a boy from hard work, from self- 
sacrifice, is the temptation into which indulgent 
parents most easily fall. Christ challenged men to 
self-sacrifice. He said: ^He that would be greatest 
among you, let him be the servant of all.' It was 
under the stimulation of this hard, heroic ideal that 
Peter, James, John, Paul, and the others went out 
to found the kingdom of God. It is with this same 
ideal that adolescent boys must be challenged to 
lives of unselfish, altruistic service. To make a 
permanent contribution to a boy's life one must 
train his will and his muscles to do things that are 
filled full of the idea of the Christ. To shield a boy 
from self-sacrifice is to steal his manhood." 

Do not try to make the Christian way an easy 
road for healthy boys and girls. You are far more 
likely to win them by showing it as it is. Appeal 
to their love for the heroic and their zest for the 
difficult. They will not fail you; they will respond 
to your faith in them and in so doing will build strong- 
er character. 

6. To Train Their Conscience by Etliical Prac- 
tice. — Too often we forget that boys and girls are not 
born with a ready-made conscience. They are not 
born with robust consciences any more than they are 
born speaking the English language. They have to 
acquire both. Conscience has to grow through ex- 
perience and develop by exercise. An important 
phase of the Church school's opportunity in early 



142 Community Forces for Religious Education 

youth is to train the conscience in judging between 
right and wrong. We must arouse in the boy a 
mighty prejudice against evil and a love for righteous- 
ness. Through the habit of worship and private 
prayer we must help him to keep his conscience sen- 
sitive to moral values and ready to recognize evil 
and condemn it. Accuracy in judging right and 
wrong is mainly a matter of experience and testing, 
like judging anything else. Education, of course, 
helps. The lessons and class discussions in the 
Church school should help considerably. But it is 
the actual practice in moral choices, forced upon the 
boys and girls in daily emergencies and temptations, 
which really makes their consciences efficient. Wise 
teachers will test their pupils from time to time by 
confronting them with emergencies requiring quick 
decision. In games and sports such moral choices 
are constantly arising, even in such a quiet game as 
croquet. With increasing age and experience con- 
science naturally becomes steadier and more reliable ; 
but much depends on the youth's moral prin- 
ciples, especially their ideals and the central loyalty 
of their lives. Other agencies may help train an 
ethical conscience, but only religion can spiritualize 
it and make it reliable. Therefore, our schools of 
religion have the chief responsibility in this impor- 
tant business. 

7. To Furnish Them Concrete Ideals for a Life 
of Service. — Our young folks must have right ideals 
by which to guide conscience and control conduct. 



Community Forces for Religious Education 143 

Their admirations and enthusiasms largely deter- 
mine their ideals, and these dominate their growing 
character. All through early youth they are busily 
selecting their working ideals, testing them by experi- 
mental use, retaining or discarding them, often out- 
growing them as hero worship leads them upward to 
nobler imitation. Real conversion fixes their loyalty 
upon Christ, personalized and concrete, as their 
supreme ideal. Loyalty to him soon destroys the 
grip of other less worthy ideals, which cannot stand 
comparison with his perfect purity and moral 
strength. Christian comradeship greatly helps this 
process. Our young folks need to feel the strong 
suggestive power of a well-organized group with 
right' ideals of conduct to strengthen their own. 
This is exactly what their organized class in the 
Intermediate Department, under effective guidance, 
should do for them. The personal example of a de- 
voted teacher counts here for the very utmost.' 
It is the secret of his influence over the class. If he 
exemplifies high and noble ideals and has a winsome 
personality he not only grips the class in intimate 
friendship but, what is more important still, also 
wins their enthusiastic loyalty to his own ideals. He 
is thus interpreting to them practically the ideals of 
Jesus by making these ideals visible in his own 
Christian character. 

This process reaches its climax in consecration to 
a life of service. It is the teacher's high task to stir 
within the souls of these young folks a spiritual 



144 Community Forces for Religious Education 

ambition to make their lives count to the utmost in 
this thrilling generation, the most wonderful age 
in which young folks ever lived. There will be many 
misgivings as to personal fitness for great tasks. 
They will need constant encouragement. It will be 
most important for them to see the futility of a life 
of selfishness, the sheer pettiness of the mercenary 
spirit, and the emptiness of a life that knows no 
high resolves, no great convictions and devotions, 
no exalted sacrifice. As they study the biography 
of unselfishness they will be deeply stirred by the 
desire for imitation. Let us teach them, through the 
eloquent message of Calvary and of every martyr 
life, that the highest joy is the joy of sacrifice, and 
the happiest life the life of service. 

For Investigation and Discussion 

What is your Intermediate Department of the 
Church school aiming to accomplish this past year? 
What vital needs of early youth has it been disre- 
garding? Have you really been interpreting life to 
the pupils? 

Do you boys and girls feel the Bible to be a living 
book or a book of the past merely? Discuss ways in 
which you can make the Bible live for them, a book 
of life. How will this help them to meet adolescent 
doubts? Get In the Master's Country, Tarbell, and 
discover how to make Palestine real by teaching its 
geography. 

Have you taught the human life of Jesus this past 
year so as to bring him near to your pupils? What 
experiences of his life will it help them to share with 
him, in imagination? How should this affect their 
loyalty to him? 



Community Forces for Religious Education 145 

Why does heroism appeal so strongly to youth in 
the early teens? Has your department had this 
year a course in ''Heroes of the Faith"? What 
characters in Old and New Testaments are most 
valuable as types of heroic living? Why^s it wise to 
bring illustrations from general history also, es- 
pecially from missionary annals? Make a list of 
heroes worthy of a Christian ''Hall of Fame." 

Do your pupils respond more readily to easy or 
difficult appeals? Do you agree with Mr. Robinson's 
testimony about the latent heroism of boys? What 
hard stunts have you challenged your boys with 
lately? 

Find out whether your boys and girls have reliable 
consciences by testing their honesty in making 
change on errands, their truth-telling, and their 
treatment of young children and old people. Watch 
how they play baseball and croquet: Did they need 
watching to keep them playing fair? Discuss meth- 
ods of training conscience. What have ideals to do 
with this important matter? 

Where have your boys and girls been getting their 
ideals? How has the Church school helped? What 
effect does real conversion have upon a young person's 
ideals? How does good comradeship influence 
ideals? In what ways have you been teaching your 
class the futility of selfishness and the nobility of a 
life of service? 

Review The Church School^ Athearn, pages 
205-226, and then discuss the needs of your depart- 
ment for more effective expressional activities. You 
will also find numerous suggestions along this line in 
The Boy and the Sunday School, Alexander, Chapter 
X, " Through-the-Week, Activities for Boys' Organ- 
ized Classes.'* 
10 



CHAPTER X 
THE CHURCH'S RESPONSIBILITY FOR ITS 
BOYS AND GIRLS 

1. The Broad Mission of the Modern Church. — 

In the preceding nine chapters we have been study- 
ing the various community forces that serve as 
agencies of religious education. In all this consider- 
ation we have been quite aware of the fact that the 
final responsibility falls upon the Church. Character 
education, religious education, is the great work of 
the Church. While other agencies may help, each in 
its own special role, the Church must complete their 
unfinished tasks; for character is its supreme concern. 
Home, school, workshop, fun center, social center, 
etc., each furnishes its segment of the education of 
our boys and girls in early youth and their life train- 
ing; but how shall these segments be bound together 
and fused into a vital unity? What institution shall 
supplement and perfect the work of all the rest? This 
can be done only by the Church. 

Christ left with his disciples the challenging vision 
of the kingdom of heaven. His Church is the execu- 
tive agency of this glorious kingdom, this democracy 
of God. With the spirit and purpose of Jesus in its 
heart, the Church dare not deny responsibility for 
human welfare. It dare not refuse his program of 
(146) 



Community Forces for Religious Education 147 

human service. Its mission is as broad as his was, 
as broad as the unmet needs of humanity. Its 
business is to do, directly or indirectly, the tasks left 
undone by other agencies, to prevent needless 
suffering, ignorance, and sin; not to duplicate the 
machinery of service at any point, but to supply it 
where needed, to supplement it where ineffective, and 
everywhere to be the dynamic for human welfare and 
progress, the power house for generating inspiration, 
courage, and intelligent consecration in every second- 
ary agency for human welfare. The Church can 
never, with good conscience, be a shirker; when it 
finds human need, it must do the task or try to 
get it done. It must never pass by on the other 
side. Though its work is primarily inspirational and 
spiritual, its ultimate goal is a redeemed society, the 
kingdom of heaven on earth. 

It is easy to see how vitally this principle applies 
in the field of religious education. Here the Church 
finds a challenging task. It must inspire all the social 
agencies and institutions that touch the life of youth. 
It must stress the eternal importance of Christian 
character. It must train the leaders, teachers, and 
comrades of youth, and keep alive their religious 
devotion. It must reveal the high motives and ideals 
for life, which must always come from the realm of the 
spirit, and furnish the moral dynamic, the power of 
a redeemed life, which God alone can give. From 
its own fellowship it must provide the helpful com- 
radeship that young folks especially need. It must 



148 Community Forces for Religious Education 

maintain a well-equipped Church school, with an 
adequate curriculum of religious education, with 
courses in religion which public schools cannot teach. 
It must promote religious and social activities for 
the boys and girls, through which they may express 
their religion, fix it in character, and meanwhile 
serve their community and the world. Thus the 
Christian Church takes up the work of religious 
education where all other social factors leave it and 
completes the task. 

2« TheUnique Service of the Church in the Field 
of Ideals. — Many people regard the Church as a 
luxury rather than a necessity for the community; 
but even such men must recognize that civilization 
owes its highest ideals to religion and the Church. 
The Church's noblest service is to inspire human 
imagination to see visions of a better life and then 
furnish human wills the moral power to live that 
better life. This compelling vision is a moral ideal. 
In many ways religion develops it. Through wor- 
ship, with its prayers, songs, anthems, psalms, and 
Scripture, aided often by the suggestive beauty of 
architecture also, our hearts are lifted into the pres- 
ence of God. His living Spirit touches ours and helps 
us understand his truth. Thus, in moments of 
quiet worship come our visions of purity, integrity, 
self-sacrifice, and consecration to new standards of 
right living. Sometimes these fresh ideals are inter- 
preted to us by a beautiful song that strikes a 
responsive chord in our heart. At other times it is 



Community Forces for Religious Education 149 

the earnest message of the preacher that thrills us 
with its challenge to something better than we before 
have known. Its beauty and power grips our con- 
science. We pray for the power to translate this 
new ideal into character. This moral dymanic saves 
us from sin if we incarnate the spirit of Jesus and 
realize our ideal by living the Christly life. 

This suggests to us how unique the service of 
religion is in the realm of ideals. The Church alone 
is able to spiritualize our ideals and give power to 
our moral strivings. No other agency can rival it in 
this regard. Only through worship can we or our 
children perceive the noblest ideals and gather from 
our Father-God the power to translate them into 
life. Nothing could possibly be of more importance 
in religious education; for our goal is not gained until 
we are living the Jesus way, and our life never rises 
higher than our ideals. 

3. The Pastor's Opportunity as Religious Teach- 
er. — Others of us may be teachers in the Church, 
but the pastor is the teacher of the Church. For three 
hundred years the ministers of the ancient New 
England Churches have been called ''pastors and 
teachers of the Church.'' The teaching function of the 
pulpit has always beem emphasized in Protestant 
Churches. In most denominations the preaching 
aims to be both inspirational and educational, 
though varying in proportion. The pulpit is one of 
the great educational forces of America, probably 
still. outranking both the theater and the press. It is 



ISO Community Forces fo? Religious Education 

a real education to share year after year the religious 
instruction of a teaching minister who is a true inter- 
preter of life. Such a man has a great opportunity; 
for his people, who have known and loved him for 
years, welcome his teachings with open minds. In 
the attitude of worship they are most apt to be 
teachable, and a well-ordered service puts them in 
the mood to receive his message. 

If the pastor is closely related to the work of the 
school, as he certainly should be, he can correlate 
his pulpit work with it and thus unify the Church 
work of religious education. He will occasionally 
announce a series of sermons for his young people 
which are definitely educational in their aim. If 
the regular attendance of a group of children is 
assured, it Is well worth while to give them special 
attention. All too frequently It is true that the 
Sunday school Is really a substitute for the Church, 
and the children come up to their teens without 
forming the habit of Church attendance at all. 
This forces upon the minister a special responsibility 
for the youth In early teens. It Is the time when the 
habit of regular attendance at morning worship 
must be established. If not before, certainly at the 
age of twelve let the children, like their Master, go 
up to the temple. Let the children's Church gradu- 
ate Its members Into the older congregation at that 
time, and let the Junior Department of the Church 
school do likewise. If their parents are nonattend- 
ants, let a special place in church be provided for 



Community Forces for Religious Education 151 

them. Then let the minister feel this challenge: .to 
make his preaching intelligible and of vital interest 
to these boys and girls in early youth. Go-to- 
Church bands and similar plans are useful, but they 
will survive a six-month testing only when the 
settled habit of attendance proves worth while 
because the sermons prove really educational and 
the boys and girls, if they come and listen, really 
learn something about the great truths of life. A 
wise and sympathetic critic of the Church recently 
made this shrewd observation: that many people 
cease attending some Churches because they learn 
nothing there. This caustic remark penetrates to the 
very core of the Church attendance problem. It is 
truest of all with keen-witted young folks. The min- 
ister who would succeed with his young people must 
hot fail to be a teaching minister. He must make 
his preaching really educational. 

4. The Training Class for Church Membership. 
— Happy the minister whose young folks not only like 
to meet him at church but anywhere else, especially 
at his home and in his study. If the study is spacious 
enough, it is the ideal place for the pastor to meet his 
boys and girls weekly through the winter in a train- 
ing class for Church membership. Joining the 
Church is too easy, in some Churches, really to be 
respectable! If it requires no preparation, in mind or 
heart or life, it means nothing. Entangling all kinds 
and sizes of fish, wholesale, in a mighty net, is very 
poor sportsmanship and ought to be illegal. One by 



152 Community Forces for Religious Education 

one, with hook and line, is still the right method 
for self-respecting fishermen. Likewise, the careful, 
individual method is still the approved method for 
fishers of men. It is slower but far surer and more 
genuinely successful. Don't be a wholesale scooper 
of minnows; be a true fisher of men. Be considerate 
enough to give each candidate for Church member- 
ship personal attention. It is folly as well as in- 
justice to the young Christian not to do so. Dignify 
the step of uniting with the Church by requiring real 
preparation for it, and you greatly enhance its value, 
you save it from cheapness, and you give it worth 
and real meaning. 

Thousands of Churches make the training classes 
for Church membership a regular part of their winter 
program. It supplements the work of the Church 
school and is frankly both educational and evangel- 
istic. It is true educational evangelism. The more 
formal Churches call them catechetical classes, or 
communion classes, and have always used the plan 
with marked effectiveness to prepare the boys and 
girls for their first communion, usually just a little 
earlier than the age period we are now considering. 
The catechetical method of stereotyped question and 
answer is not the best method for this age of thought- 
ful independence; but all students of youth know how 
strategic it is to stress the initiation into Church 
membership with sufficient appeal to mind and 
heart to make it deeply significant. In planning the 
meetings of the training class the pastor will include 



Community Forces for Religious Education 153 

both devotional and instructional elements. He will 
meet frankly the personal questions of the boys and 
girls regarding the Bible and the faith. He will 
explain to them the natural development of the 
Bible as a collection of books, each with its own 
special purpose and mission for its day. He will 
plan a course of Bible study on the simple funda- 
mentals of the Christian faith to stimulate their 
thinking, to clarify their ideas, and to furnish them* 
his own best suggestions on the meaning and method 
of the Christian life. He will discuss with them as 
intimately as possible what it means to be a Chris- 
tian, how and why they should become Christians, 
what Church membership really means and why it is 
desirable, what the sacraments mean and why we 
observe them, also the outstanding ideals of Protest- 
antism and of their own denomination. By the time 
the more personal lessons in the course are reached, 
the wise pastor will arrange personal interviews with 
the class, singly or by twos, as may seem the wiser 
plan, and, if this step has not already been taken, 
will try to lead the way to personal consecration to 
Christ. Thus his work of evangelism will keep pace 
with his instruction. It is a splendid thing to bring 
this significant work to a climax on the night of 
Good Friday and to give the wonderful story of the 
cross its full power of appeal to the hearts of these 
young people. After these weeks of careful prepara- 
tion, in comradeship with a friendly minister who has 
fully won their confidence, and with a background of 



1 54 Community Forces for Religious Education 

definite instruction on these most important themes, 
our boys and girls will be ready for a life consecration 
that will be genuinely significant and permanent. 
At the following communion they will be prepared to 
enter Church membership in a public service whose 
impressiveness they will never forget. They will 
take the covenant of Christian living intelligently, 
gladly, and with whole-souled devotion. 

5. Expressional Activities in and for the Church. 
— Many Churches find it easier to get the boys and 
girls in than to keep them happily useful in the 
Church. The efficient Church provides ample scope 
for the religious expression of its young members. 
Whatever other auxiliary organizations the boys and 
girls may be connected with, these expressional 
activities should all be correlated with the Church 
school, with its organized classes in the Intermediate 
Department. If there is an intermediate young 
people's society for this special group of young 
folks, it will naturally serve as the chief agency for 
this work, but it should be closely related to the 
Church's program of religious education. Religious 
expression by the boys and girls should be stimulated 
by the services of worship, especially their own 
meetings by themselves, to develop free expression 
of their growing convictions and aspirations. Their 
personal talents should be inventoried by their 
teachers and utilized, whenever possible, in appro- 
priate lines of service for the Church; for all such 
participation develops the boys and girls and deepens 



Community Forces for Religious Education 155 

their devotion to the Church. All good singers 
among them should be organized into a junior choir 
for occasional use at evening services and in the 
Church school. Others will serve as the ''minister's 
pages/' to distribute calendars, bulletins, flowers 
after service, assisting the flower committee and 
various other committees in a variety of useful ways 
in which such young folks can help. More and more 
the dramatic talent of the boys and girls is being 
enlisted for special services. Programs that combine 
musical interest with the dramatizing of Biblical 
stories or more elaborate attempts at pageantry 
have peculiar educational value and produce most 
effective public services for the Church which are 
highly appreciatedo These junior high school pupils 
will need wisely planned socials in the Church and 
will be able to assist effectively in carrying out the 
plans for their own entertainment. If the community 
lacks playgrounds and adequate facilities for play, 
the Church should promote, through its Church 
school^ a recreation program to fit the needs of this 
period. The entire program of their various Church 
clubs, mentioned in detail in Chapter VII, should be 
supervised by the Church council and made a part of 
this expressional work, all of which should help to 
deepen and make permanent the work of religious 
education and loyalty to Christ and the Church. 

6. Religious Education Through Community 
Service. — It would be a calamity if these boys and girls 
should come to regard their Church as merely a mutual 



156 Co7nmunity Forces for Religious Education 

benefit organization. The more highly they appre- 
ciate what the Church is doing for them, the more 
willing they should be to share its privileges with the 
community. They should learn at once the working 
ideals of a community-serving Church, especially in 
the country village, where it is most acutely needed. 
They should be taught that the Churches that live 
are the Churches that serve. The social gospel in 
which the modern Church believes is simply the 
gospel of service. It is based on Jesus's inaugural 
program in the Nazareth synagogue and his practical 
teachings and life of human service. There are 
many lines of community service our young folks in 
early teens cannot undertake, but a gradually 
increasing share in this phase of the Church's work 
as their sympathy develops by kindness is a part of 
their privilege and a part of their religious education. 
Altruistic feelings are strong in early youth and are 
easily aroused in the interest of needy families or 
boys and girls in lonely homes who need friendly 
comradeship and a better chance in life. 

7. Religious Education through Sharing in 
Missions. — Final mention in our program is reserved 
for the enterprise of missions, not because it is most 
remote or least important, but rather because it is 
the climax of Christian endeavor and the final test 
of the genuine Christian spirit. Missionary educa- 
tion is a vital part of the religious education program. 
Nothing more surely stimulates the spirit of idealism 
and altruism than this study of heroism in the great 



Community Forces for Religious Education 157 

adventure of foreign missions. Nothing else fur- 
nishes the conception of the largeness of the Church's 
task in the world. Nothing else can bring the full 
force of the challenge of Christ to our boys and girls. 
They must know something of the romantic story 
of modern missions and the present world program 
of Christianity to save them from religious provin- 
cialism with an eighteenth-century outlook on life. 
Let them become religious cosmopolitans, interna- 
tionalists for Christ and humanity, knowing no 
frontier that the gospel cannot pass. Correspondence 
with French and Belgian orphans and Serbian and 
Armenian refugees has already widened their sym- 
pathies. Let us connect their Church school classes 
with a struggling Korean or Indian girl; perhaps a 
Hindu child widow, groping for light and freedom 
in some mission school; or an ambitious boy in an 
African kraal, with a hunger in his soul for a real 
chance in life. Such contacts with the personal 
struggles of youth in other continents and races will 
broaden their interests and all the dimensions of 
their lives. Let such plans continue to extend their 
intelligent sympathies with distant races until all 
the world seems near, and their prayers, their heart- 
throbs, and their gifts encircle it. It will be a great 
day when our young folks learn that the most fas- 
cinating and most divine movement in all Christian 
history is the great enterprise of missions. 



158 Community Forces for Religious Education 

For Investigation and Discussion 

Ask five ministers and five business men or farmers 
to tell you in writing what they think the Church is 
for and why your community needs it, with special 
reference to youth in the early teens. Then discuss 
these statements in the training class. 

What needs of youth, unmet by other social 
agencies, must the Churches of your town provide 
for? Are they doing this? Why does this responsi- 
bility belong to the Church, to complete the un- 
finished tasks of character education? 

What have ideals to do with character? Show how 
we depend on religion for ideals, Analyze the effect 
upon yourself of a service of worship. Describe the 
methods of the best teaching ministers you have 
known. How can the Sunday morning service be 
made more valuable for early adolescents? How 
secure their regular attendance? 

What are the tests of membership in your Church? 
Are these too easy ? Do they mean much to the 
boys and girls? What should educational evangelism 
accomplish? Discuss plans for the training class for 
Church membership and its study program. When 
are boys and girls really prepared for Church 
membership? 

Are all the expressional activities of early youth in 
your Church correlated with the Church school? 
Why should they be? List all such activities in the 
Churches of your town and test their usefulness. 
What is being neglected that you find needed ? Dis- 
cuss plans by which these boys and girls could 
become more useful in the Church. 

Study the chapter on ''The Boy Outside the 
Church'* in Boys' Work in the Local Church (Associa- 



Community Forces for Religious Education 159 

tion Press), and discuss how your Church may 
outgrow its failures with boys. 

Show the importance of missionary education in 
the program of religious education. Study Making 
Missions Real, Stowell, and discuss its usefulness 
for demonstrating missions to teen-age groups. 
What personal contacts have the Churches of your 
town made with French, Belgian, and Armenian 
orphans and with children in mission lands? What 
effect did this have on your own boys and girls? 

Study Dramatized Bible Stories for Young People, 
Russell, and report on its possibilities for local use 
by your Intermediate Department. It is new and 
very well written. 

In Religious Education in the Churchj Cope, study 
the fourth chapter, on ^'The Meaning of Education 
in the Church." Take notes and report to the class. 
Chapters II, III, V, and VI will also be found 
valuable in your class discussions. 



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